Fate: Eternal Repetition
by Xy-Trig
Summary: A boy cursed to repeat the mistakes of his past. A knight, fated to see only his own failure in every place. Suppose the two meet and fight as one? Can their destiny they overcome?
1. Entrance of the Red Knight

_Stories are like threads woven together to make rope. They start somewhere, giving you a feeling of both foreboding and of wishing to follow. They take you in loops, knots and spins that can save a man or break a man. The characters, the plot, the setting, each thread is carefully chosen to give the rope its strength, its color, its draw, and its ability to attract others to it. Finally, it terminates, bringing people to their destination, usually in a remarkably different condition from how they were before._

_But sometimes it feels as though that thread repeats itself endlessly, in a hopeless cycle of repetition and despair._

He struck me in the stomach with a solid punch. The force compressed my muscles, nearly crushed the organs, and pushed all of the water in them back and forth, wracking my body with intense pain. Besides this was also the knowledge that the attack was meant to cause pain, and nothing but pain.

But that didn't matter. After all, in my time alive I had felt more than my share of pain, be it on my hands, on my body, or in a place a whip or a strike would never reach.

"Stay down, kid." The voice was calm and totally impassive. The tall man who gave this order was probably already pushing thirty. In the town he was known simply as a madman and a raving lunatic, with his speeches about magic and magecraft and such. To them he was a madman spouting nothing but gibberish. His latest rant had been that the city would soon play host to the Holy Grail, something they dismissed as "just the crazy guy talking again."

To the boy he was beating, however, it was all painfully real. All of the things the man said about inherited magic circuits, about prana and mana, about the Five Magics, all of that was the world he lived in.

And the Holy Grail the other man sought was the goal of the boy spread out on the ground in apparent pain. With his ruffled and messy black hair, red shirt bearing the words: "I work better when playing video games" and a picture of a maniac player in action and blue denim pants, he looked like a teenager out on the town.

But his thoughts were anything but.

_Now, big guy, let's see how you do against a proper magus._

"Event Repetition: Pain." He said, facing the floor. His saliva dripped on the floor, and as if it was the signal, the older man bent over and clutched his stomach, as if he himself had been hit in the stomach with his own punch.

If I were to tell you that the boy on the ground had caused the delusional adult to bend over, you wouldn't believe me. Even if I explained to you, it would defy common sense and any form of rational thinking.

So let's skip over that. In the meantime, the man, fully understanding that in one way or another, the boy had caused the crushing pain he had suddenly felt, turned to the boy.

"Event Repetition: Stand."

The boy moved to his feet with a speed that seemed impossible for a person, as if he had been standing the whole time. The man's eyes widened with shock and he went for the gun tucked in the holster on his left hip, which was hanging just above his belt.

"Event Repetition: Strike."

The man had already put his guard up and hardened his muscles, ready for an attack. His arms formed an impenetrable guard in front of him, and any action taken by the boy would be futile. In terms of technique in hand-to-hand, there was no contest between the two.

So why did the punch strike with the same amount of force that the other man had exerted, despite it being made with the right hand of a 16-year old with only about 3/4ths of his muscle strength and far rougher technique than he? Despite the impossibility of the fact it had been done, clearly and unequivocally as the second, true round of pain hit the man, forcing him to double over. The boy walked towards the man who was doubled over in pain.

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way." The boy said. "Give me this hideout and disappear, or we do this the hard way. I have money, so you can set up in a nice little place somewhere else if you wish." He delivered this offer with an uncompromising face, meaning that any further negotiation was pointless. There would be no arguing anymore, and the next attack would no doubt be a fatal strike.

Ignoring all of this, possibly blinded to the nuances of negotiation by rage and hatred, the older man stood up. The boy merely drew a dagger and put it into his right hand.

"Event Repetition: Punch."

The same force, applied in the same way. The punch the other man had thrown was repeated, this time aiming directly for the head of he who first threw it. The main difference, however, was that a knife had been placed in the hand. The force of the punch was enough to propel the knife forwards, digging into and destroying the skull of the target, and piercing the brain for an immediate kill. The event had been repeated, but thanks to circumstance, the result had changed. The boy quickly withdrew his knife from the head of the man he had just killed. Wasting no time, he walked down into the basement of the single detached house, where he found all of the necessary preparations already made.

_Well, I can't say anything about his preparation skills, that's for sure._ The boy thought to himself as he turned on the lights, revealing a magical circle etched on the ground and all of the reagents already placed in their positions. _So I came just in time._ The boy said, striking a match and lighting the candles that were around the circle. He stood in the middle and began to chant.

_Silver and iron to the origin. Gem and the archduke of contracts to the cornerstone. The ancestor is my great master Schweinorg._

The circle began to glow, slowly and regally turning around to match the speed of the chant._  
The alighted wind becomes a wall. The gates in the four directions close, coming from the crown, the three-forked road that leads to the kingdom circulate._

At this point the boy raised his hand, fist unclenched._  
Shut (fill). Shut (fill). Shut (fill). Shut (fill). Shut (fill)._

With each "Shut" he closed his hand, with each "Fill" he opened it. Every time he did so, a candle went out until the five that were on the edges of the circle, forming the shape of a pentagram, were all out._  
Repeat every five times.  
Simply, shatter once filled.  
――――I announce. _

The boy opened his eyes and brought his hand down in front of him to stretch parallel to the floor. His voice took on a new air of strength as he continued._  
Your self is under me, my fate(doom) is in your sword!  
In accordance with the resort of the Holy Grail, if you abide by this feeling, this reason, then answer!  
Here is my oath. I am the one who becomes all the good of the world of the dead, I am the one who lays out all the evil of the world of the dead!  
You, seven heavens clad in three words of power, arrive from the ring of deterrence, O keeper of the balance ―――！_

"Come forth, he who would answer my call!" He screamed.

Perhaps it was the desperation of the voice calling out into the Throne of Heroes, begging for a warrior to assist him on his impossible request.

Perhaps it was predestined, that it had happened before that he had summoned a hopeless warrior who raged against the world and decided to pull out any means to end his suffering.

Or perhaps it was just that a coincidence of luck that that Servant was the one that appeared before him.

The red coat, flapping in the wind generated through the Throne of Heroes.

The armor shining under it, jet-black and imposing.

The bare, tan hands, the height of a full-grown man, and the white hair and clear eyes of a shell-shocked veteran going for one last mission.

That was the man that appeared before the boy who repeated events. Kneeling before him was the browned knight in red.

"This is a rhetorical question, but… I ask of you, are you my Master?"

The red marks appeared on the boy's hand, but he felt nothing of the burning pain told of by those who had experienced the bloodbath he had just entered. He looked at the marks disinterestedly before turning to the man that knelt before him.

"Yes I am, Servant Archer." He pronounced clearly.

"Then we waste no time." The red knight said. "The enemy is already here." The boy nodded.

"As expected of a Servant such as yourself." The boy said. "Let's go welcome them, shall we?"


	2. Arrival of the Dancing Blue Spearman

Through their mental link the boy and the red knight immediately ascertained their situation. The enemy was waiting right outside the door of the house, fully prepared for the summoning of a Servant to this location.

"Well, someone's certainly excited." I told the Archer who was my Servant, although he didn't really need me to say it for him. "The moment we come out that door we'll be hit with an attack we won't be able to handle."

"Don't underestimate me, Master." He said, a confident smile coming onto his lips. "We'll put up a good fight before we go down."

"Very funny." I told him as I walked over to the right side of the room and opened a window. "Let's do this the right way, shall we?" I said, taking a position that had me ready to jump out the window.

"You're smarter than some other Masters I've had, at least." He said. "I'll be right behind you."

"I certainly hope so, Archer." I said, and kicked off of the window. It was on the first floor, so there was no danger of me breaking anything.

The main danger would be the Servant that would be going for the kill as soon as I stepped out of that window. To avoid a sudden and quick death, I kicked off as hard as I possibly could from the windowsill, flying out into the yard that continued from behind the house.

My concentration was such that even the herald of death, he who called out his killing intent in such a light and clear voice yelled "Got you!" As I had predicted, I heard the spring of his jump from the ground behind me.

What he didn't know was that the aria of my counter was already on my lips.

"Event Repetition: Leap." I kicked off again, blasting forward as if I had leapt off the windowsill again, my body was thrown forward, completely throwing off the other Servant's aim. I took this time to turn back to see who it was.

Blue hair. A blue, skintight suit with perfect lines of silver woven into it, with pauldrons that were almost as large as the man's head, shining with all of the luster of steel. Red eyes and earrings that dangled down completed his outfit, with the exception of the two-meter long blood-red spear that he wielded.

I caught a glimpse of his surprise for a moment before he turned the lance to block my Servant's attack. From out of nowhere, my red knight had summoned a pair of swords that reminded one of the symbols of yin and yang, the two halves of a single sword, both shaped like hatchets. Without any break or thought I knew their names; the swords called Kanshou and Bakuya. He struck downwards, forcing the spearman to halt his charge and spin around to intercept.

The swords struck the spear with a metallic clang with the sound of an explosion. Sparks flew as both warriors sprang back to regain their footing, each sizing up their opponent.

"With a spear that long, I wouldn't be too far off the mark to say that you were Lancer, correct?"

"You're right about that." The spearman replied. "But who are you? I've never heard of a bowman who uses a pair of swords."

"Then you'd better start reading up." Archer replied, and as if that was the signal they both kicked off of the ground again to continue their duel. I was mesmerized by their performance.

Each attack was perfectly aimed and calculated to deal the most damage possible, as well as to provide the least openings for the other man to strike.

Head, neck, forehead, heart, throat, leg, ankle, wrist, arm. All of these were prime targets, the attacking of even a single one being highly lethal.

I knew that the force behind the lance was far too powerful for Archer to be able to block them with just his shortswords. Lancer pressed the attack, although I knew he must be shocked. Those blades had been knocked out of Archer's hands thrice since the battle had begun.

But there they were, still in his hands as if nothing happened. What's more, he was using them to form a wall, giving no ground to the raging spearman who threatened to get past him. No matter how fast the rain of thrusts or swings was, Archer's blades were always ready to meet the assault.

"I've disarmed you at least twenty times." The spearman in blue said. "Every time, your sword comes back. You've got some good moves for an archer pretending to be a swordsman." The red knight responded, taking the time to resummon his shortswords to his hands.

"Where's all that energy you had just a bit ago?" He asked. Without any sort of provocation he took a step in to close the distance. At that range the shortswords would have the advantage over the thrusting spear, and any large swings would be caught by the swords before it got started, or worse, Archer would go straight for Lancer and that would be the end of it. Quickly Lancer jumped back, easily clearing ten feet with the backward leap.

Only then did I breathe again, only to exchange it for another breath held as the blue spearman raised his bloody lance up to the level of his head, the tip pointing straight at the ground and the butt thrusting into the sky.

"Then die to my strongest attack, pretender." The blue spearman's body sank, and I could see the technique and strength that went into each jump he made. I could see the distance now.

Ten meters. Ten meters that were absolutely insignificant to either Servant. Ten meters in which there would be a rain of steel from both sides, where blades would rush to pierce any who dared step inside that zone.

The killing intent was sharp and tangible as a blade levelled at the neck, and right now, it not only took me everything I had to hold back my desire to run without looking back, that resistance even took the form of an attempted smart remark.

"This is gonna suck." I said. In response, the red knight gave a dour smile.

"I suggest you give me an order before I am pierced, Master." He said. "It would look better than me handling it myself." The banter seemed a bit forced, though, and we both knew why.

Even without knowing exactly what it did, clearly, the curse of that spear was something we did not want to face. We both knew, instinctively, that if that spear went off then it would be the end of us. I looked on, wondering which one of my arias would have the most effect at this point.

_Repetition of a punch won't do much at this point, a leap will only be abandoning Archer. I could always use that, but…_

The red fog reached its crescendo, thickening and forming a full cloud around the blood red spear. Archer squared his stance, ready to push forward at the decisive moment.

The blue spearman's mouth began to move. At this point I knew I had misjudged the attack completely. The curse was something to be uttered rather than something within the spear itself. Archer, having seen this, was already moving. But that did not deter the blue spearman, who stood there and opposed us with nerves of steel. His mouth formed the shape, and his vocal chords stretched to produce the sound that heralded our impending demise.

"Gae!" The Lancer called, the fog beginning to clot around his spear. The wind picked up a bit, the prana in the air rushing to the blood-red lance in the hands of the blue spearman. There was no way that Archer could make it in time before the rest of the spearman's aria was complete.

There was only one thing left for me to do. I took a breath and let the memories of my recent leap flood through me, allowing them to take over me. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as my thoughts began to flow smoothly, as if they were being typed down on a keyboard and seamlessly transmitted to my mind.

The air that I had pushed aside in the act, the way that my body had forced itself against air resistance and gravity.

_Understand the nature of the event._

The muscle power I had expended, converted inefficiently into prana and from there into raw force. The nature of the single concentrated burst of power coming out of my legs to propel me forward into the night.

_Replicate the necessary ingredients._

The motor neurons in my head firing, telling my muscles to push and jump. The instinctive human knowledge of angles, force, and distance that would allow me to make the jump with both confidence in its possibility and alertness in its execution.

_Bring forth the knowledge required for execution._

The idea of myself flying through the air, being propelled forward a few extra meters in a short span of time, as if being launched from a cannon of my own making.

_Calculate the action and the reaction; make real the vision._

Lastly, the raw magecraft that makes it possible; this body trapped by the endless cycle of repetition, its magic circuits engraved with the mark of repetition of the past, recreate the vision!

_Begin repetition._

"Event Repetition: Leap! Archer, Action Execute!"

The repetition of events had always been my origin, after all, the story of my life, so using that kind of magecraft with myself as the focus would not be difficult.

But to enforce repetition on that tempestuous, fleeting, and ever-changing being that is the human would be an arduous task, especially so on Servants, who are the ideal of humans themselves and therefore "more human than humans". The only reason I was able to execute the repetition of the action at all was that Archer's will and mine were one.

To get closer to Lancer and to prevent injury or death.

That was our shared goal, and he accepted the yoke of repetition in order to defeat it.

A yoke I would have nobody bear at any time.

The pain was far more horrifying than any so far. The power I had used so many times on myself with nary an ill effect now wracked me with pain. Compared to the other pains I had endured, though, it was slight. After all, it was only as if one rod of molten yet solid steel had run through my right hand. I braced it with my left, seeing the red marks on the back of my left hand. I felt time stop, as if the entire realm of existence had slowed to a crawl.

As if powered by the leap I took from the windowsill in addition to his own power, Archer shot forward like a red bullet, faster than he himself ever could have. The blue spearman saw this, and immediately realized that the half-completed curse on the spear would not save him from the red bullet that had been unleashed on him. Instead he swung directly upwards, denying Archer the chance of attacking him while pulling back to a safer position. Archer stopped, pursuing the blue spearman no farther. I let go of the breath I was holding, letting it go harshly thanks to the pain of the magecraft. I bent over, clutching my right arm in pain. They weren't really there, but I could have sworn that there were some burn marks on my hand branding me black. Paying me no heed, my red knight closed in on the spearman without a warning. Instead of offering resistance, though, the spearman sprang back.

"Tch, I've got a cowardly Master again." He said. "Show me some better moves the next time we meet, bowman!"

Archer said nothing as the blue spearman leapt through the night. Neither of us was in the mood to pursue him at this point. The pain in my right hand had subsided by now, but it still stung.

"Let's go and regroup." I told the red knight that was my protection. "They'll see us if we stay here, and that would be very bad."

"Good, at least you've got your basics straight." He said. "There are things we will need to discuss."

"Then to avoid detection let's split up. Make your own way to this location and wait for me." I said, handing him a piece of paper I had prepared beforehand, along with a map of the city.

"A bit on the secretive side, are we? I like that." He smiled almost mockingly as he said this.

"It's something you learn when you're in my line of work." I said. "No time to waste."

Both of us understood that well enough as we went our separate ways.


	3. Looking Backward, Looking Forward

The night streets of the city weren't strange or different for me, in fact I felt more at home out in the streets than I did in the house. I ducked into a convenience store, quickly bought a few bottles of cold water and waited at the counter for the goods to be checked. The meeting point I had set up with Archer was actually on the other side of town, but I would take the train for that later. Being this far away gave me some time to myself to think and to wonder on the events that had brought me to this point.

_So they thought they won, huh? So they won't notice that this is happening right under their noses._

The place was Miyama City, barely a hundred miles from the original site of the Grail Wars, Fuyuki. With a single train ride he could easily pay his respects to more than just one of the Fifth War's veterans, taking his pick from the Tohsaka's daughter, the Einzberns' latest human doll, or the Matou's child. It had been barely a year since the end of that War, where they thought they had destroyed the Grail completely. Once they realized it had not been completely eliminated, though, the Lord El-Melloi II himself had come out to destroy it, sparking off much tension between the Holy Church and the Mages' Association, but eventually he had his way and the Grail was destroyed.

Or at least, so they thought. In truth, the Holy Church had not wanted to lose the access to the Great Grail that they had created, so they had stalled for time. In that small span of time they had brought in their experts on magecraft to copy the circle that the founders of the ritual had used. With this, they were able to recreate the entire ritual, a threat the rest of the world had long believed solved completely. The girl at the counter was done, and so I held out the reusable cloth bag I had packed, into which she placed the bottles of water and handed them to me. I took them and began to walk towards the back door.

Nagato Tohsaka, Justeaze Lizrich von Einzbern, and Zouken Matou. I have added to the disgrace of having their ritual used to ends besides their own the small burden of writing their names in the wrong Japanese order, something that I would certainly go to hell for quite soon. _So much for learning the local language_, I thought, opening the phrasebook and effortlessly reading out the romanji that told me how to say goodbye to the shopkeeper as I walked out the back door. _I've been prepping for this for months, but I still have no idea to say anything routine._

The most probable reason for that would be that I had had no cause to do anything routine. My sponsor had already paid for all that needed to be done and made the arrangements beforehand, so all I had to do was stay here and fight. If I needed anything else, all I had to do was to ask him and it would be done. Of course I didn't know his name. No names were exchanged in this business, although I could guess that he was a magus who knew about what they were doing here, but couldn't interfere because of politics or some other crap that the bigshots of the world used to excuse themselves from actually doing anything. The night air was cool on my face as I walked to the train station three stops away from the last stop in town. I would get on there, then get off two stops from my destination, then begin to walk around again, in order to throw off my opponent's reasoning.

All I had been told was "Go here and be ready to fight a war against magi and ancient heroes. I will furnish you with anything you need. Money is no object, as long as you win." And as if to send the message that he was absolutely serious, the man had sent along a check for twenty thousand euros. The letter explained this as an "advance and a starting fund".

Being a bounty hunter, there was no way I could refuse such a good offer. After all, most of my life I had spent hunting magi with Sealing Designations. These people were always on the run, obsessed with escape and research over anything else. Killing them sometimes felt all too easy.

But in this War, I would be pitted against the elite of the magi world. Professional fighters, people who could fight, or, at least, people who believed they could fight in a war. I snorted as I came up towards the train station and wordlessly bought a ticket. Walking onto the platform and waiting for the next train, I had to smile at myself.

_One wonders if my Origin of "Repetition" really dooms me to repeating my own mistakes, or is it that the only reason I repeat my mistakes because I know about my Origin of Repetition._

I stepped on the train, grabbing onto one of the poles. People on the late shift at work were coming back home now, so I stood to make room for them as I stared at the window and reminisced.

It had been a fairly simple process. Born into a magus family, at a young age he had been singled out to inherit the Mystic Code. He had been a good student and a receptively curious boy, the kind of person who jumped at the chance to be something. At the age of thirteen, when he was as well-versed in lore and knowledge as most magi of the Clock Tower, they performed the ritual to transfer the family's Mystic Code of "Dervish Bullet", a nasty little curse derived from the spinning devils of yore, along with a myriad collection of other spells based off of mythical creatures. All in all, the spells were a collection of useful and quirky magics, but nothing very powerful. They started the ritual, prepared the Code for inheritance.

I felt absolutely nothing.

The one from whom the Mystic Code was to be taken, my uncle, felt nothing.

The Mystic Code was absolutely unaffected, my Magic Circuits refusing to change. Nothing happened. No matter how many times they tried the ritual, nothing changed. However, since I already knew the family secrets, there could be no other outcome.

They shot curses at me from their positions, the multiple different curses showing ht personal preferences of the different students of the art. It was an unusual family structure because we actually had apprentices from the outside come in to learn, with one person keeping the Mystic Code and being the teacher and master. Each of the curses was subtly different, reflecting the inner truth of the person who used it. It was, in fact, like a milder version of using the Origin as an attack.

Honestly, the whole experience was completely surreal. A moment ago I had been ready to inherit the Mystic Code, the next moment I was going to die by it. It was absolutely wrong. There was no way my life could end with just a single move like that, as a result of pure fate and bad luck. That's just not how it's supposed to go.

_Society is composed of people who repeat the actions of people before them. Despite the fact that they can be modified or tweaked, they are still, in effect, doing the exact same actions. All you have to do is to simply respond properly to the way they have treated you. Give them a taste of their own medicine. _As if handed to me, the image of a single spell rose unbidden; the spell of the guardian bear that was one of the most powerful protective spells of our line.

"Event Repetition: Guardian Bear, cast!" The aria escaped my mouth before I could even think of it, and the bear was summoned. Bursting out of the floor, the gray blob of energy in the shape of a bear defended me from every attack at once. I wasted no time in chanting the next aria, acting as a man possessed.

"Event Repetition: Flames of the Phoenix, burn!" I sang out. As I saw it, it was now kill or be killed.

My family, my friends, everything I had known had betrayed me now. I knew that I had nothing but myself from this point on. Looking back, it was a rash and stupid decision, to immediately burn all my bridges and kill the only people in the world who cared for me, but that was all that I could think of at that time.

After all, the appropriate response of human law is recompense, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth", as a Babylonian, the beginning of all civilization, would say. I thought this as the room burned.

As the house-slash-dojo in which I had grown burned, and as everyone I had ever known inside of it died in the fire.

Just like when I got my Mystic Code, I felt nothing.

"The train has now reached the Kitakura district station." I heard the announcement cut through my reverie and I stepped off back onto the platform. Marching out onto the street, I continued to think on the past.

After that I had learned how to get by. Jobs came often from the Magus Association and the Holy Church, because apparently there were a lot of people who needed to be put down. Apparently rogue magi were everywhere in the world, and if someone could take them down, it was someone who knew the patterns of a hunted magi well. Given my Origin, this made me a very effective magus killer. It had escalated until finally, I was hired to participate in this mockery of the original Heaven's Feel, the Fuyuki Grail War. Over my career, though, I had repeated the same mistakes.

I had killed comrades corrupted by the plagues and the magi who were our targets as soon as I saw them changing, making no effort to wonder if they could actually be saved. Leaving them there to die was probably my own revenge on the world for letting my family try to kill me.

I had always hidden in the back, fighting only when the others could not make a move. With my unique Origin, I had been relegated mostly to a supporting role in the game of death that we played with our targets. I had nothing against doing mundane work with my Origin, but it weighed on my when a comrade died and I could do nothing.

_So I guess this is just me trying to get away, me trying to be on the front line._ I thought. _Me trying to validate myself as something besides just a hunter and a killer._

I smiled derisively at myself as I entered the small house I had taken out for myself for the duration of the War. Archer was not there yet for some reason, so I decided to begin rereading the files I had on every magus in the game.

I didn't want to repeat the same mistakes again. "Know your enemy and know yourself, fight a hundred battles and never fear the result." I had seen comrades die because I had not been careful and repeated the mistake of not doing the research on the enemy. As such, I had already compiled a file on my opponents.


	4. Brains behind the Bullet

The simple fact that this War was a way to bring back the peace and appease the different magic-users of the world was nothing to me. The Mage's Association, Atlas, and the Holy Church had all sent representatives, the supervisor being another man of the Church.

Trained for war and having been regarded highly by their peers, these magi were of the highest quality. However, that was also their weakness, as they weren't very good at hiding their own identities. Information on their abilities and their habits was easy to obtain, and their addresses in the city were no great problem. I had subdivided them into three main groups.

First there were "the nobles". These three magi were well-respected in the Clock Tower, and in terms of materiel they were the most competent. However, these three had had to escape the notice of the Lord El-Melloi II, a survivor of the Fourth Fuyuki Grail War, and secondly because this was a secret Church project, their main criteria for being chosen was friendliness to the Church, rather than actual experience. I smiled derisively. _Once they find out what's going on here, then it'll all be over._ I thought. _The three of you had better be ready for this._

The first magus among them, the one who had summoned Saber, was a tall and blond-haired woman about six-two in height and a penchant for lab coats, sweaters, and denim pants. An American, functioning as the lead for this mission, Sylvia Trenton was an accomplished magus who studied runes and is one of the best at deploying them in action. On the outside, she appeared to be a mild-mannered thirty-year-old cultural anthropologist with a hobby for occult runes, but she also studied the magical power of runes extensively. She has a headstrong and cheerful personality, often being called "that crazy bitch" by her colleagues due to her reputation for headstrong and reckless tactics. Because of this, I had no doubt that she was also a dangerous and cunning opponent, as those who only know anger do not survive long in the political shark tank of the Clock Tower. Right now, she and her entourage of the two other "elitists" of the Clock Tower were staying at the J.W. Marriott, probably to keep themselves comfortable and at full power. She had arrived about a month ago, and I had visited them on surveillance about every other day. Looking her up on the webpage of the college in which she worked, quite a prestigious one, in fact, she was listed as "on vacation and will be back shortly". On the days I observed her habits she acted as a normal tourist would, going to malls, tourist sites, and other places around the city. However, I noticed she made an effort to litter, which surprised me greatly, as her profile had also said she was quite clean. After she had left I picked up one of the candy wrappers she had carelessly allowed to drift in the wind.

Carefully written onto it was the Eoael rune. It was written in a clear ink invisible to anyone without a working Magic Circuit and training as a magus. The rune meant "home", which meant that it was probably part of a bounded field ritual.

I ripped it apart and threw it in the trash. She would be a dangerous opponent.

Her two lackeys were nothing special, or at least didn't appear to be. On the surface they were just two graduate students she had become close to, parading them around as two of her brightest, but further investigation smashed their records. The true nature and name of the two students wasn't even close to their covers.

They were British, a man and a woman. The woman by the name of Clare Arwin, and she was about the same age as a graduate student would be. Almost as tall as Trenton but far less predisposed to lab coats, instead opting for a more attractive shirt-and-leggings look, something that was probably there because of her lover and fellow lackey, Brian Thorne, the tallest of the group and with the same age as Clare. Together they commanded the Servants Rider and Caster, with Clare forming a contract with Lancer and Brian forming a contract with Caster.

The two of them had a deadly combination of magecraft within them, the girl being an expert at Formal Craft and the creation of large circles, while Brian was a master of reinforcement, something that complemented his training in karate very well. This was ironic, as their magecraft defied their personality, the girl being rash and impetuous while Brian was always calm and collected. I shook my head as I read their entry in my book again. Even without their Servants, I would be hard-pressed to take them on, as they were well-prepared for any attack. They were still young, capable, and yet they still had room to grow. The future of the Clock Tower, I idly wondered why they were sent out here instead of being allowed to grow within the Clock Tower. I had not had the time to run a proper background check on them all, as I myself had only entered the game a month ago.

Moving on to the next group, there was the side of the Holy Church. They sent two of their finest Executors to stay in the Miyama Church, from where they spread out. Being from Japan originally as well as being experts in concealment and secret operations, I quickly lost them, but not before getting their names, appearances, and the Servants they had contracts with.

Kouhei Kaname was a sober black-haired man well into his twenties. Despite this she was much like an Executor, with no proper magecraft other than the Black Keys and his faith, but she was also a competent fighter and strategist. I had personally met him a few times in my work, and he had always struck me as the cool, professional type. Standing next to me he was slightly shorter, but his stature and strength were such that you always got the feeling he was looking down on you instead of vice versa. With such a sober and professional person, I was genuinely surprised that he summoned Lancer, the blue spearman who had nearly killed me, as a Servant.

_Who knows, maybe the guy's the life of the party back at the Vatican._ I thought. It suddenly occurred to me that he might recognize me, however the last time I had gone with him was a year ago, and I had bought myself a new set of clothes for this War in order to hide myself, as well as using my natural puberty aging process to my advantage, so I would not be easily recognized. Continuing to check my list, I saw that he had brought his usual partner along as well.

Yagi Kotohime was Kouhei's bodyguard and apprentice, a green-haired short girl with glasses who was nevertheless far more capable in direct combat than Kouhei. I had heard that he had found her fighting off the Dead with nothing but a lead pipe when she was sixteen, and to this day two years later tales of her solo battle with twenty of the Dead with her bare hands were still being told. Her normally calm and emotionless demeanor persisted into combat, becoming an almost ominous yet calming presence, something that both scared us because you never knew what she was thinking and reassured us as her calm silence reminded us that it was all fine. She fought as an Executor would, with Black Keys, although she had learned some Reinforcement in order to strengthen her physical combat capabilities. It was no surprise when she had summoned Assassin as her Servant, showing her skill in battle and nothing else. With these two teams, the winner seemed obvious, however, a third party had emerged among the powers of the world.

The last team from Atlas was a pair of alchemists that had kept the War in a Mexican standoff for a month. The first of them was an artificial human known as Griselda V, who was one of the early prototypes of Atlas' artificial humans. Along with her was an alchemist-professor who came with her in order to record her strengths and defects, going by the name of Professor Hayden.

Griselda V was the Master of Berserker, and her dark skin and purple hair were a strange combination, to say the least of her jester's leotard with a lab coat over it. To top it all off, she was bedecked in golden jewelry and modern-looking glasses. She had no magecraft, instead functioning mostly as a prana tank for Berserker, who required a ridiculous amount of magical energy. Her only notable talent was the Three Divided Thought Processes she possessed, allowing her to quickly comprehend anything that happened. She was quiet, but the main difference between her and Yagi was that her quietness was more unnerving than anything, and it gave the sense of not having anything at all underneath it, quite unlike Yagi who seemed to have a cold determination beneath her calm exterior.

Professor Hayden was far more capable on the magecraft end of the equation, not only possessing more mental power with his Four Divided Thought Processes, but also being experienced in the arts of using the Earth element to attack. This helped him to create the artificial body Griselda V inhabited by using earth to help shape it, as well as making him a competent fighter. He quests for knowledge and experimental findings the most of all, carefully examining and looking at every little thing to learn from it. Of course, his Servant was of the class Archer, the only one that was left open.

I smiled. After all, my role in this War was far, far more than just the ordinary combatant. I was the 8th combatant, the wild card, the one who would break the deadlock. With my Servant, the Second Archer, I would have to be the one who started the fighting.

However there was one thing bothering me. The Holy Grail here should be free of the defect that had plagued the Fuyuki Grail, and yet my Servant, a Counter Guardian no less, had been summoned for no apparent reason. It was an event that should not have occurred, which is something I should be able to sense, having repeated things so often that I can tell cause and effect without much effort. Since effects do not take place without causes, my secondary objective was to find the cause of Archer's summoning.

I was quite sure that nobody in the city expected the explosion on par with the munitions deployed by the modern military, but that made it no less shocking to me when the huge mass of sound blasted the house. Judging from the explosive force it was probably just a few blocks down, which meant one of two things. One, that someone had intercepted Lancer on his way back from his mission, which I doubted, or two, that the Masters had already started fighting amongst themselves. I stood up and rapidly walked to the room on the ground floor where I had stowed my weapons. As I rounded the corner, Archer spoke to me.

"Master, that explosion was caused by two Servants." He said. "I'm not entirely sure you heard it, so I thought I'd tell you about it." I smiled. That Servant of mine had the best sense of humor I had found since I had been a bounty hunter, and among both comrades and enemies alike I had never found a sense of humor like this. It was unique and refreshing, while at the same time witty and cutting, something appreciated for a soldier whose light moments were infrequent and ephemeral, as it could turn even the most dire predicament into a joke routine. My smile grew wider as I delivered a riposte that was somewhat forced, as the serious situation was not something to be easily ignored.

"I'd be surprised if there was a person alive who didn't hear it." I said. "If you are already there, continue to observe. If you suspect that you are spotted, immediately retreat. I'll be at your location in ten minutes or less."

"A bit impatient, aren't we? Getting ready to pick one of them off?"

"Not necessarily." I said, opening the door to the room full of weapons. "Just collecting information." I said.

"Collecting information with the barrel of a rifle?" The voice was quizzical, and I could imagine my Servant's amuse smile on the other end of the mind link, causing me to start grinning even wider.

"It's self-defense." I said as I walked into the closet that held only a large golf bag in it. I felt Archer nod, and he left presumably to oversee the battle.

I flicked on the light and opened the golf bag, revealing the final evidence of my rejection of magi. If there was one thing that proved that I could no longer associate with the world of the Mages' Association, it was this.

Sleek, black, and shiny, a perfectly crafted all-plastic tube of death known as the LWRC SABR rifle, an assault rifle patterned after the M4 Carbine that also incorporated a special barrel that allowed it to be converted into a sniper rifle. Both barrel parts were in the bag, as well as a pair of M92F Beretta pistols, gleaming in their black plastic skins. Zipping up the bag, I shouldered it and turned out the light, walking out the front door. I knew for sure that the clips were there, as well as all of the attachments needed to turn those weapons into precise machines capable of killing magi. Cold, impersonal plastic that would nevertheless sever the lives of those who wielded magic, this was the ultimate blasphemy against the ideas of the Mages' Association and their code that placed magic above all.

Also, this was my rejection of them, and my understanding that magic and magi in general are like natural forces to be controlled, and when necessary, to be put down like beasts, whether for their own good or for the good of others. I belatedly remembered something at the front door, so I put down the bag and unzipped it. Taking out a brown shoulder-holster, I strapped it on, one of the Beretta M92Fs being placed within it soon afterwards. Putting on a trench coat to conceal the weapon, I walked into the afternoon light, headed in the direction I felt Archer was in.

_It__'__s time to make the presence of the Eighth Servant felt. Event Repetition: Magi Destruction, commence. _I thought, smiling a completely different smile than the one I had smiled moments earlier when Archer had remarked on my "collecting intelligence with a gun".

It was the smile of someone who was about to slake their thirst for blood.


	5. Balance Of Power

The great black hulking mass of muscle was standing in the middle of the park, its huge axe-sword poised above its head, ready to strike. Its eyes searched hungrily for their opponent, as if looking for a target upon which to unleash its berserker rage. Its nostrils dilated, as if it thought it could smell the prey. Its ears were pricked up, attentive to even the smallest sound that could give away the enemy's position.

Standing behind the massive black wall was a slight girl with a lab coat and a jester's leotard, the girl who commanded the beast. Her eyes moved, following a shadow moving through the trees.

"Attack."

This one command from Griselda V, spoken in a soft voice nearly inaudible to anyone who was not right next to her at the time, was acknowledged by her Servant, who moved with immense speed to strike at the tree her Master had looked at. The shadow burst forth, a silver chain attached to what appeared to be a long steel nail arcing towards the black giant's head. The black mass of muscle that seemed so immovable moved lithely, arcing to the left as the chain flew in the space where the monster's head would have been. The purple-haired woman, deftly avoiding the great axe-sword, landed in the grass of the park, in front of the trees that had almost been destroyed by the monster's attack. She pulled her chain back and held the arm-long nail by the ring that was attached to a chain, preparing for the next attack.

That attack was delivered without hesitation by the black monster, his size belying the amazing speed he possessed. The entire exchange took only moments, and this next strike came quickly upon the heels of the last.

"Fast, but you're faster." A voice from quite far behind the site of battle, the voice of a man wearing a green turtleneck sweater and acid-wash denim pants said, as he analyzed the battle. "Keep away from him."

"I understand, Master." The purple-haired woman said. Her eyes were covered by what appeared to be an extremely advanced and well-designed visor that blocked out any vision of her eyes, and her figure and its full womanly curves was concealed only by a tight leather outfit. Holding the chain of immense length that was her weapon, she moved, the length of the chain jangling as she moved with speed that exceeded the average bullet.

The black strike moved with the intensity of a diving plane, but the black bullet with a purple top rushed to the side of the attack, throwing the chain forward to harass the monster once again with the spikes on the end of it, but the black monster easily moved out of the way.

The attacks were fast, but their dodging reflexes were faster. This was a game of dodging, and as such there were two possibilities for this battle. The first was that this fight would sink into a battle of pure attrition, a battle that would be won by the person who could continue avoiding the others' attacks for longer.

The second possibility was that one side would commit more to the attack, something that would tip the balance of the battle towards one or the other combatant. However, the Grail War was only in its early stages, so this was considered by the observing red knight to be an unlikely outcome. His eyes scanned the battlefield, watching the two of them intently. In the back of his mind, however, he had to wonder.

_What are those two doing being summoned again?_

The two in the park continued their deadly game of cat-and-mouse, the great axe-sword slashing furrows in the ground as it chased the purple blur of speed. In retaliation her chain shot out, coming within inches of slashing her great opponent, who bellowed his rage as he jumped again into the assault. He wondered whether anything would be able to break the stalemate, or if anyone would be willing to do so.

Hearing footsteps behind him, he thought that there was no longer time for wondering, as his Master had arrived to watch the proceedings.

"I'm here, Archer." His Master said, extremely redundantly. "This is quite the show they're putting on here."

"Gathering information is a key part of the War, Master." He said, calmly appraising their position. "Reconnaissance will only get you so far without actual combat."

"True." His Master said, pulling out the SABR sniper rifle. "Then let's start this." He shouldered the rifle and aimed it at the girl behind the wall of muscle, looking through the thermal sights. "I'll get the other Master next."

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Master." The red knight said, pointing his Master's rifle at a rooftop on the street across from them, a few buildings down but with a commanding view of the park.

He saw the heat signature of a man clad in black, all except for the white mask on his face. Without a doubt, the presence on the other end of a scope was a Servant. Unnaturally lean and composed, his left arm seemed to be missing. Despite this, the opponent on the other end of the scope was graceful, balanced, and appeared poised to strike.

The sniper bit his lips in frustration as he diverted his attention to the battle between the two now, and the Masters who were so easily visible down his thermal scope.

_Annoying. I wanted to break the balance of power my way, but it looks like it's not happening._

Without turning to his Servant, continuing to look down his thermal scope at the battle simmering in a dance of metal.

It disgusted him completely. The set-up was all wrong, the lighter and more agile chain-girl was not using her speed to her fullest advantage. Instead of pressing the attack and making an attempt at the Master, the wall of muscle was not moving at all. To someone like him who believed in the quick and decisive defeat of the enemy, this was sickening to watch. It was all because of the alliances that had been formed. He knew for certain that the two opponents were Rider and Berserker, definitely not the kind of opponents you did not want to meet.

"They're just shadowboxing down there." He said, spitting out the words. "That purple girl is probably strong enough to take down that big wall of muscle. Look how fast she is, and look at how close the chain is coming to the big guy." He complained. "Damn alliances are stopping them from really fighting."

He knew it was a stupid belief for a bounty hunter, but he really believed in fighting fair and straight-up. Archer looked at him for a second before turning his attention back to the fight below them.

The purple-haired girl continued to weave around, the huge black axe-sword following her as she dodged. Moving between the strikes, she threw her chain, which was never fast enough to catch the gigantic warrior as he dodged to the side. It was still a stalemate, even if the collateral damage suggested a battle of total annihilation. Cracks and craters turned the ground into a lunar surface with miraculously surviving grass, trees were chopped savagely by the huge axe, sending their tops flying, and streetlights were destroyed entirely, plunging the area around their fight into a darker night.

The man was completely unfazed, calmly assessing the situation. The girl in the jester's outfit, however, was not so composed in combat.

"Attack them, Berserker!" She yelled. "Why won't they go down!?" Her voice was not yet that of a beast, rather, someone who was beginning to lose their cool and about to go wild.

Her huge wall of muscle made a roar as he drew back, raising the axe-sword and looking as if he was preparing where to strike the next blow.

And then he stopped in mid-strike.

The purple-haired girl had stopped as well. She had been in the act of throwing her chain to break the big man's concentration, but even the chain had stopped in midair, suspended above the ground as if the air around it had solidified to hold it in place.

Only the man smiled from outside the field of stoppage, as two women entered the park from the side, completely ignoring the damage wrought by the battle.

One of them was dressed in a sweater, leggings, and a trench coat to cover it all. Her face revealed nothing about her, the kind of impassive face you only saw on those who were explicitly trying to control their emotions.

The other one was in a hooded robe that cast a shadow over the top half of her face, and she was extending her hand, appearing to mutter words as well. Her smirk as she looked as the immobilized combatants was all you needed to see to know that she, in some way, had been the cause of this.

Up in the building, the sniper looked through his scope and muttered under his breath.

"There goes the balance of power." He said as he gripped the thermal-scope rifle tighter, aiming straight for the heart of the woman in a trench coat.

"I'd love to give you a welcome by fire, signora, but then the black assassin would stab me in the heart. Excuse my impoliteness."

Archer smiled at this sardonic remark, but said nothing more.

"You couldn't have come at a better time, Clare." The man commanding the purple-haired warrior said. "I was wondering why you were late."

"I was just waiting for the right moment." She said. "Were you afraid that I wouldn't get here in time?" She asked. Her face had dropped its normal expressionless look, taking on the impression of one who was looking at something they wanted but couldn't take it. Like a child at the candy store, looking at the sweet little piece of candy they wanted so dearly.

"No, of course not." He said, putting his hand on her shoulder. "Now come on, let's get this over with." He said.

"Yeah." She replied. "Caster, you know what to do." The hooded woman only nodded as she began to float towards the other side of the battlefield, towards where the girl in the jester outfit was. She stopped short of it, though.

Because the girl in the joker's outfit was not there. The hooded woman frowned a little as she began the hunt for her quarry.

_I'm going to have to be more careful with my spells the next time._ She thought to herself as she floated above the park. _You won't escape._

Up in the building the sniper followed these events, watching the thermal signatures of the hunter and the hunted.

_Dammit, if that Assassin hadn't shown up I could've taken some Masters down._ He thought as he looke dup the check if the Assassin was still there. He still was.

But behind him was a huge heat signature that looked to be about the size of a boat. In midair. He stared at it.

"Master, are you alright?" Archer had noticed his Master's lack of movement and immediately reacted.

"I am now, but we might be far from alright very soon." He responded. "Just take a good look at that." Archer followed his gaze, and when he saw that shape he had only one thought.

_This will not end well._


	6. Flashpoint

_Sorry this took so long. I had... other commitments._

"I shall forgive your insolence this time, unknown Servant!" The golden king proclaimed, his voice casting out over the whole battlefield. "Know, though, that the next time you cross me, it will be your death!"

With that he turned around, frowning, to his supposed "Master".

"Will that do?" He asked, absolutely bored. "Be grateful that I am suspending killing those mongrels."

"Yes, my king." Hayden said. "You are most beneficent."

"Now, where are these fools who dare put up a bounded field in my garden?"

"Their allies are attacking your loyal follower, my king." He said.

At this the golden-haired king smiled, and the golden ripples holding weapons appeared again.

"Then we shall have to end them." He said, his hand raised, and looking down at the park.

If seen from the ground, it would be easy to notice that more golden ripples appeared in the sky than before. Instead of the four summoned and one sent forward for the fools who had dared to strike at his ship, there were twenty golden ripples in the air.

And when he saw the enemy below him, moving towards the ten-foot tall monster and the Master it shielded, he closed his fist before the weapons arced forward.

His shout of "Fire!" was heard by all in the vicinity.

From her position a few blocks away, on top of a water tower itself on top of a condominium, Sylvia Trenton saw the whole thing happen. She saw the huge wall of gold in the sky, and as if by instinct she pulled out her radio, a walkie-talkie that she carried around for quick communication.

"Run! I can't stop it!" She hissed into it, stamping her right foot on the floor.

Normally, that would be a stupid, pointless action. But below her was Elhaz, the rune of protection. That rune was connected to the leyline running to the park, and it would put up a bounded field that would protect anyone with an Elhaz rune on them in the vicinity.

But she could see, even from this distance, that the weapons were too strong to be stopped by just her Elhaz rune, and she gave an order to her right hand.

"Make sure they come back alive, Saber."

A slight woman with blonde hair and a dress plated with armor, who nevertheless presented a profile of strength and honor befitting a king, appeared kneeling before her Master. She said only one thing, short and curt, like a general conferring the final order before the battle began.

"Yes, Master." She said before leaping off the tower.

_Godspeed, Saber. _She thought. _My students are down there._

"Got it." Brian Thorne received the message. "Clare, we're getting out of here!" He yelled. This was mostly to warn just her, as he was sure that both Servants could already sense the extremely powerful weapons headed down towards them.

"Alright." She said. Her face and movements said otherwise, that she would love to finish off the opponent in front of her, but she assented. She trusted Brian's judgment, and she waved her arm to beckon Rider towards her. The purple-haired Servant rushed towards her master, right past the still-immobilized black wall of muscle.

A black shadow, streaking across the park.

Blood, and a straight line extending from the edge of the park straight into Rider's back, on the level of her chest, exactly where her heart should be. In the act of running, she had been bent forward, but that was taken to an extreme, the force of the arm pushing her body further forward towards the ground.

Only when the silent eyes of all who saw it took in exactly what happened did the blood burst outwards onto the ground, the long black line retracting back towards its owner. Rider's still-beating heart, pumping out blood, was inside the shadow that resembled a hand at the end of it.

And the Servant Rider dead on the grass of the park. As if to confirm that fact, the Command Spells on Clare's hand just disappeared. There was a flash, the sound of dissipating prana, and then there were none.

Nobody moved, nobody spoke, and all only turned their heads towards the now-visible Assassin, his white mask standing out in the darkness of the night. Without hesitation, his left hand, the one that had not just stretched out into Rider, immediately moved, and as if by magic, a knife, black as the night it was surrounded by, rushed forward towards Clare Arwin.

The shock of seeing the first blood of a Heroic Spirit, as well as having it done so suddenly and with speed of a Servant, would be enough to put anyone to shock.

Taking that into account, it was good enough that Clare had covered her mouth with her hands before three daggers buried themselves in her. One of them struck in her stomach, creating a rip in her blouse and a huge hole in her stomach, sending a puddle of blood to the surface of her clothes up to her coat.

The second dagger lodged itself in her neck, severing her windpipe and cutting her neck nerves, finally coming to a halt between two of her vertebrae. It had not nicked any major blood vessels, so she might have had a small chance of living, given immediate emergency treatment.

But as cruel fate would have it, the last dagger lodged itself in the brain, "right between the eyes", as a sniper would say of his shot. That, combined with the injuries and damage already sustained, guaranteed that as of this moment, Clare Arwin was deader than dead.

Sylvia Trenton raised her left hand. She knew what had to be done.

Her Othala rune, the rune of family, had been broken. The only thing that that could mean was that one of her students was dead. Carved right below the Othala on her right hand were two smaller runes, two Mannaz runes, or the runes of man. Those two Mannazes were for her two students.

And the right one had just been totally erased. Where there was once an intricately woven and cared-for rune, there was now just her white but not pale skin, and another lonely-looking Mannaz.

She said only one thing.

"Win this War, Saber."

And on her left hand, she felt a burning pain that she knew was the price of her failure. There was only one way to redeem herself now.

She entered the building, ready to take the elevator.

The plan was simple, really. This was supposed to be a scouting run, just a way to feel out their opponents and get some information, gather things for their next move. It was supposed to be low-risk, get in and get out.

But apparently, their opponents had turned this into the death game, and they had no way out than to respond in kind. Clare and Rider's quick and painful death had proven that much.

The three magi were the most numerous, the most powerful, and they had a good balance of Servants. The only problem was that they had no conception of war, that they had no experience in dealing with the harsh destruction and pain that war always brings.

Brian Thorne was normally a calm and careful man. His decisions were well-thought out, his movements measured. Everything he had ever done had been according to his plan, and if he did not already have one, he made one on the spot and carried the day with it. He was the kind of person who would not move without an impetus, always planning, always stopping.

But this was extenuating circumstance. For the first time in his entire life, someone he loved, someone he treasured, had been killed right in front of his eyes.

There was no hesitation, as if a bombardment of Noble Phantasms was not about to hit him. Almost subconsciously, all three marks on his left hand disappeared.

"We will win, Caster." He said, and the woman's body surged with power. Exploding into a fiery ball of energy, Caster began to fire beams in every direction, attacks directed at all of the energies of the Servants in the vicinity.

The barrage of light was both terrible and beautiful, a scream of pain from Brian, losing something he treasured, which only complemented Caster's own scream, the power overloading even her extremely well-tuned Magic Circuits. Beams fired in straight lines, the light of death cutting through walls, curving through terrain, and blasting into explosions, all in the search of the closest Servant.

The black shape with the daggers was first. Running through the cleanly-cut plants of the park, and trying to dodge beams loaded with a curse of death and utmost hatred, the Assassin continued on his mad dash to escape.

A mad dash that proved entirely hopeless. Almost immediately after his initial jump, he had already been incinerated by a beam of pure light. The magical beam was made of pure energy, curving to burn through flesh and bone. The prana was both only haphazardly shaped and controlled and was highly unstable, immediately exploding outwards in an uncontrolled burst.

In short, Assassin was absolutely vaporized, with nothing left to even testify of his former existence. With that, the person who had killed the one most precious to him had been eliminated.

But it was not enough for Brian. The Holy Grail could grant one wish, and he now knew what he was going to use it on. His mind was perfectly lucid, forming a plan once more.

His body, however, was still emotionally unstable. Channeling the lucidity of his mind into an icy rage that seemed to form crystals of ice around him, he drew a small hatchet, of the kind that you would see at almost any tool shop, from the side of his pants. Although normally, such an action would be useless, but that would not be the case now.

_I know myself better than anyone. I know my flaws, I know my own suffering. I know the things I love, the things I wish to do. I know where my body is weak and I know where my body is strong._

_Fill the gaps. Destroy all imperfection._

With that, his life force flowed around his body, mending his wounds, reinforcing his body, hardening bones, strengthening muscle, improving reaction time, performing all of the modifications he could possibly take. But he was not yet done.

_This hatchet I have had since I was a child. This hatchet is an extension of my body, my tool in war and my tool in peace. I will take it and strike down the enemy before me._

_Fill the gaps. Destroy all imperfection._

He was bent down from concentration on the spell. His form was wreathed with prana, almost invisible in the raging storm that he created to fill his imperfections. Beside him, Caster was in her own little cloud, floating in the middle of the air.

_I know how he feels. He has had so much taken from him, by cruel fate, no less._

_I have had this same burden taken from me by treachery and deceit; the vagaries of life and men._

_Therefore I will help him with all I have._

Griselda V ran back to her Servant. Her eyes, empty as they were, took in the situation. Assassin had been disposed of, the Rider that was her opponent gone. The only opponents she could see were the pair that had frozen her Berserker. They were powered with a sort of magical energy, feral rage that manifested in a cloud of pure prana surrounding them.

Somehow, despite her being programmed, born, and made to have no emotion, she still felt a tinge of excitement. Her opponents were fired up and ready to fight, and she would be there to oblige them.

Perhaps that was why, against the dictates of logic and strategy, she wordlessly ordered Berserker forward with her pointer finger. A small smile curved her lips as her Berserker, the great wall of muscle that he was, charged forward without hesitation.

The battle had only begun.


	7. Dancing Blades and Scathing Tales

I didn't know what the hell had just happened. The moment we ran outside the building, I had been too focused on not dying to the extremely powerful attack falling from the sky at us to notice the battle that had broken out from the stalemate. I saw craters and explosions, never a good sign.

"What the hell!?" I screamed. "Looks like these guys were thristing for a fight, and to think that it's just the first night!"

"That's how it is when everyone wants to pile in." Archer said, stoically. "One thing leads to another, and before long, there's a bloodbath."

_No doubt about that. _I thought. The salvage crews would have a hell of a time dealing with the park, with the body of a woman and enough blood for two on the ground. At the same time, there was a large crater that was blown in the ground, probably the final resting place of the Assassin that had butchered Clare Arwin, the corpse on the floor. That, in addition to the furrows already dug up by Berserker, who had regained his movement and was rushing towards where Brian and Caster had been standing when I had last seen them. I looked up.

And before me stood two miniature suns, one purple and one blue. The two seemed to move in unison, united in purpose and thought. Immediately I recognized them as Brian and Caster, unleashing the power of their emotions and energized by their vital powers. Without a doubt, I was saved by the rampaging monster to my right attracting their attention, with them turning their ire on the black Berserker.

Grateful for the reprieve we took off back into the street, ready to jump into the fight at an opportune time. Still, I had to wonder what Yagi and Assassin had been thinking to escalate the situation so quickly.

I took up my position just behind a car, in time to watch the fireworks unfold. At least, that was the plan.

"I thought you would be here." A voice said. The voice was deep, cool, familiar, a voice I had heard quite a few times before. I already knew who it was without even having to turn around. Still, though, as a matter of courtesy I did.

I wasn't at all surprised to see the tall man in priest robes behind me.

"Kaname Kouhei." I said, using the Japanese name order. "Fancy meeting you here." I said, perfectly cheerful. Beside me, Archer materialized. Both he and I knew what would happen next, and what this man was.

Clearly, to be standing here in the middle of such a fight without raising an eyebrow, he must be a Master. But I already knew that.

We faced each other down in the street, unmindful of the battle unfolding in the park beside us.

"UWUOOOOH!" An inhuman scream that the letters recorded here are woefully inadequate to describe, let loose from a charging wall of muscle. The Berserker, axe-sword aloft, rushed towards the burning miniature suns that were Brian Thorne and Caster. As if in response, their orbs of magic pulsated, releasing a wave of energy and the accompanying emotion that came with it.

_Exterminate._

With that thought, and only that thought, running through the minds of the two magical suns, the battle lines were drawn. Taking up his position on the defence, Brian raised his hatchet and a shield of prana before him. Behind him, Caster began to chant, her lips moving too fast to read as her ranks in High-Speed Divine Words showed their worth.

Berserker roared again, smashing the axe-sword into the ground to create a screen of dirt, shot up by the force of the blow, plus a huge burst of wind created by the fast movement of a large object. His instinctive knowledge of battle told him that to screen his advance could help him seize the advantage against his foe.

And of course, true to his class, he charged forward like a tank propelled by rocket engines. The way he was charging straight into what would be a magical fusillade prompted one to think of a poem.

_Into the valley of Death_

_Rode the Six Hundred._

While this was all going on, I stood my ground against the one Master who already knew me, the only one who knew what I was capable of and of how I thought. Information like that was vital in a war such as this, which was a personal affair between seven magi.

This time though it was eight. And this man, from the Holy Church, was here to make sure that there were no anomalies.

"We've worked together before." Kaname said. "I offer you a deal."

"I'm already getting paid more than I can imagine for this." I reply. "With the reward I've been promised, no matter how much I spend I'll never be able to use it all. I'm a bounty hunter who's made his living; what else could I possibly want?"

He grinned slightly and spread his arms. "I offer you salvation, my friend." I tilted my head. Was this guy going insane? Was he kidding?

He wasn't. He continued, with utmost seriousness. "I ran a background check on you after the last time we met. Your Origin has broken you." He said. His face was entirely serious, looking me straight in the eye. Somewhere in my body I felt a twinge of uneasiness, but I didn't let it show. I was sure that Archer could feel it too, and I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. If he realized that my attitude had changed he didn't show it, still looking out for the enemy. He had stopped, probably to let me respond.

The situation was as follows. I could not see Kaname's Lancer anywhere, and from the mind link I had with Archer, I knew that he had not seen Lancer either. One thing I had noticed about Kaname, even when we had worked together, was that he would not allow things to interrupt his talking, or when he was doing something. He was often focused on singular aspects of the mission and seeing them through to completion. I could use that.

"Manila, right?" I asked. "I still have the tan from when we were hunting the Dead over there." He ignored my little aside, instead continuing on his spiel.

"Yes, that's the place." He said. "Yagi had a feeling about you; she's sharp about things like this. She told me that you were going to throw yourself away one of these days, if the reward was big enough. I'm not surprised to see you here."

"I'm flattered that you think of me, but let's skip this and head straight to the deal." I said. "In case you haven't noticed, there's a fight going on beside us."

A fight that was rapidly reaching its conclusion.

Nine lives.

That was how many the Berserker had lost to the combined magical powers of Caster and her Master. Charging through the fusillade of beams and missiles created by Caster, who was deftly shielded by the movements of her prana-enhanced Master. Although he was not powerful enough to defeat Berserker on his own, the damage his attacks inflicted still hurt, even after Berserker's damage-nullifying God's Hand had been taken into account. He was moving swiftly, dodging between Berserker's attacks and forcing him to slow down to avoid losing lives to hatchet strikes.

Finally, though, even with all the delaying tactics arrayed against him, the Berserker had reached the magical artillery battery that was Caster.

She herself was mystified. Although with the raw power she was putting out she had far exceeded normal, her opponent was actually being less and less affected by their combined attacks.

The answer lay in the nature of Berserker's Noble Phantasm, the "Twelve Labors". The ability not only gives him inhuman durability and effectively having twelve "lives", he also gains a resistance to whatever was used to kill him.

Having had Caster's magic used to kill him over and over again, it was a miracle that she had even brought him down to three lives. It was not a question of power, because the Command Spells guaranteed that power was not a limiting factor. It was the resistance that Berserker had built up that was preventing her from doing more damage, bringing her effective power below the threshold that God's Hand protected from.

Directly, she could do no more. She realized that now.

But it was too late to save her from the gigantic axe-sword. The heavy weapon was already slicing through the air, with the force of a tree being picked up and swung like a toy sword. There was no escape. It would take a miracle to claim victory now.

"EX-"

Caster prepared for the worst. There would be no escape, no salvation.

"CALIBUUR!"

In a moment a blue meteor holding a bar of bright, golden light rushed into the space between the axe-sword and the hovering ball of magic. Swinging the bar of light, it exploded with the force of a nuclear bomb, blowing away Berserker with the force.

Without a bit of expression Griselda V raised her left hand. She had given one command.

"Defend." She could see that Saber's Master had also arrived in this location.

Just as planned. She could already hear the whooshing sound from above, the sound that meant an almost certain victory.

And then weapons rained down from the sky.

Up in his throne on the golden ship that he had commandeered, Archer stood, watching the results of his attacks. The smoke thrown up was incredible, almost obscuring the pillar of light that was the result of Excalibur. He frowned, as if thinking on something.

"My king…" Hayden begun, but Archer cut him off.

"Quiet. I will show them the glory of the king."

The golden ship began a carefully controlled dive.

"Here's the deal." Kaname said. "You will not use your Origin of Repetition to win. Whatever happens, you will not do what you did with the Dead. In return, I assure you of your salvation."

I just stood there. I didn't say anything, even as the shape with the bar of light in its hands rushed forward, and even as the bombardment of weapons blasted the park into a crater. Neither of us took notice of the fighters who could take no notice of us.

"You're crazy." I said. "Have you seen this war?" I asked him. "There is no way that I won't exhaust every option to win, especially with the kind of money I'll be getting after this." I yelled, almost laughing at how preposterous his idea was. "You're gonna tell me to fight a war without magecraft?"

"That's not it." He said. "What I don't want you to do is what you did then." He said. I immediately understood what he meant.

After all, if anyone knew about it, it would have been bad enough to merit a Sealing Designation.

Even though it had been the only way at the time. Without that, I, Kaname, and Yagi would have been dead long before now.

And the city we were in would have, most likely, ended up a vampire town. Probably along with half the world's population to go with it.


	8. Repetition Within The Mind

It was hot. Horribly so. All the time. That was the city of Manila.

Luckily for us, though, The Dead moved only at night, so we wouldn't have to go out into the sun. What still irritated me, though, was exactly where in the city we would be taken by our target.

That place was an absolute shithole, with almost no streets, all of which were taken over by small houses of hollow blocks and cast-off metal, people cramming entire families into what were sometimes single rooms, and in most other places definitely considered not enough room to live in. The streets, already narrow, were strewn all over with trash and polluted water, generating a stink of horrible proportions. I had actually suggested that we take scouting runs of the area first, so that we could get used to the smell.

I smiled smugly as we walked down the street, knowing that I had been right. I was in the lead, with Kouhei and Yagi trailing behind me, forming a delta formation.

Suddenly, I thought of the sights we had seen during our scouting runs, the dirty, fetid streets joining forces with the blazing heat and the horrible crowding to render the area almost entirely inhospitable. Looking around, I noticed how most people moved as if they were forcing themselves, a sure sign of malnutrition. Not only that, there was the general small size of the people here, as well as their skin-and-bones figures. It wasn't that hard to spot, as people thronged through the street, all on their own purpose.

The cacophony of conversation was everywhere, almost drowning out the sound of one's own mind. Groups of people formed lines and walked together, the better to talk to one another with and increase the noise level. Combined with the heat and the light, so bright as to hurt your eyes just looking at the ground, it made it almost impossible to concentrate on our true purpose.

_I'm not surprised the Dead can hide here._ I thought. _With this kind of smell and malnourishment, plus the environment discouraging people from paying too much attention to anyone else, it's easy to hide a few oddballs here and there._ _Damn that Levin._

Our target was a magus known only as "Levin". He had never given, and probably did not have, any other name to go by. He had been an extremely gifted student of prana and life energy, he tried to find a way to make the Magic Circuits of a person transfer energy more efficiently, allowing them to exceed their normal capacity. For example, if a magus had a maximum output of three hundred, he was attempting to increase it to maybe four hundred, possibly a thousand if he was lucky.

For this reason, he became fascinated with the Dead Apostles and the process of turning one into a vampire. However, little data was available on the Dead Apostles, and test subjects were rare, virtually nonexistent.

However, he had found a backdoor into the secret. When Dead Apostles feed on people, those without any magical potential become The Dead. The Dead are moving, living zombies, barely conscious and only extensions of the will of their master. However, their blood merged with those of the Dead Apostles, they were able to enhance their natural capabilities, with a minimal use of prana.

That was what interested Levin. He wanted to be able to recreate the extreme efficiency of The Dead and allow magi to get more out of their limited prana supply.

Eventually, or more correctly inevitably, he needed to experiment on living, or rather undead, subjects. He left for vampire territory in Romania and captured an unknown number of The Dead. He brought them back to his workshop and began his experiments.

Magic Circuit reinforcement and multiple alterations to their inner pathways had changed The Dead, turning them into something closer to the zombies of modern-day movies. Walking corpses that feel no pain, cannot be stopped, and are out for blood.

He was discovered quite quickly, and was forced to abandon his workshop. He then went to the Philippines to begin creating more of his abominations. With the high population, and the unbearably bright and hot sun, it was easy to keep his creations inside in the mornings. The normally horrible smell of rotting corpses did not affect his creations, which masked whatever smell they might have, being rotting corpses.

That was when we were sent in. The Magus Association was already sure that it was Levin, as he was the only one unaccounted for who had extensive knowledge of The Dead. This was two weeks ago.

And just like that, here we were. We found that the locals had already taken precautions, staying inside at night, which worked because The Dead only lurked about outside, and lacked the higher-order thinking skills that more powerful vampires might have. Levin honestly didn't care. He still had test subjects.

In the two weeks we were here, though, we had narrowed him down to one place in the city of Manila, an abandoned three-storey building in the middle of a depressed area. The house was already considered a house of horrors before this, the locals not going near it due to ghosts and monsters, rumors that now had some justification, long after the murders that spawned them took place. Secondly, it was ascribed to one of the more affluent families away from the area, who had once done business here but since moved out.

The building now lay abandoned, with tape and closed gates meeting anyone who would enter. Normally, this would be no obstacle to the people there, the overcrowding making people want to take over private property in search of land.

But the people of this country could be quite superstitious, and at the first mention of ghosts they stayed well away from the building. Normally, I would have scoffed at this attitude, but when dealing with forces like this it was the correct response.

_Sit back and let the professionals handle it. _I thought. Today was already going to be part of our last push. For the last two weeks, we had been waiting in the wings here, observing the movements of the monsters he had built from the rooftops, to avoid detection, as well as making sure of Levin's location. Cautious as he was, he would not leave his home and fortress.

Unless of course he began to suspect that someone was killing his creations. Then he would have to act. That was why we were out here, ready to roll. The two Executors behind me, already used to their duty, were probably carrying their own weapons and Black Key hilts in their coats.

I, being far less well-versed in combat and instead preferring to use guns, had only a machete to use. The Dead did not stop from a bullet to the head, and decapitation was the most efficient way of killing them that would not involve magecraft.

In short, the three of us, walking along the dark, narrow streets, weapons concealed except for the machete I carried openly, were out prowling the streets to commit murder. It would be easy to find a lone member of The Dead, as there weren't enough here to cause a commotion yet.

We approached an intersection, and as if on cue one of The Dead ambled in front of us. It was easy to tell, as they were the only ones who would go out on the street besides us. It continued to amble forward, not noticing the three walking blood bags that were already moving to attack it.

It was strange, in that it still looked mostly alive. In fact, if I didn't know any better, I could have said that it was just a man who had walked through wasteland and ripped his clothes, hadn't shaved, washed himself, or taken a bath in three weeks.

But there was something in the way he was bent over, something about his slow gait and careless disregard for his own limbs, the way his eyes were wide open and hungering for something, desperately searching the night for prey, there was something about him that told me for sure that that could not be a normal human. The three of us were trained fighters, so there was no hesitation.

We had rehearsed this attack pattern multiple times, a quick, three-way strike that would be certain to overwhelm the allowance of prana the Dead Apostle gave The Dead to live with. The two behind me released a Black Key each, one to pin down the shadow and the other to strike it. As a final precaution, I rushed forward, machete in hand. With the advantage of surprise, there was no way we could miss.

All three attacks hit their mark, one Black Key striking into the shadow created by the quarter moon. The second Black Key lodged itself in The Dead's chest, and I rushed forward to deliver the killing blow.

I looked straight into his eyes as I took off his head with three swings, each following the other as the walking cadaver fell to the ground. Like a butcher, I went to work, hacking at the neck until the head was detached. Unlike when people died, blood didn't gush out. There was nothing pumping it, no pressure to force it out in anything more than little spurts.

What really freaked me out, though, was how hard it was to cut them. I had been both on the giving and receiving end of my fair share of cuts, but never had I ever cut anything so tough.

"One down. A few more before we really get our message across." I said to the two. Yagi only nodded, Kouhei taking the lead in responding.

"We'll have to be careful." He said. "We're just trying to get his attention."

"I'll keep that in mind." I said, as I began to look out for more of the Dead.

The next one wasn't far, in fact it was down the street from the one we had just downed. The exact same tactic, the exact same result. We moved on to the next, although I was becoming quite uneasy by now.

I felt that something was wrong. A bounty hunter learns early on to trust his instincts, and my instincts were telling me that The Dead were not as dumb as they looked. We came up on the next one, two blocks away from our first kill. It was staggering, alone, in the middle of the street, almost as if it was inviting us in.

"I don't like the feeling of this." Kouhei said. He had picked up on it as well.

"I think we should go." I said, even as we prepared our next lunge. "This isn't going to end well."

"Property destruction never does." Words clearly spoken, coming from our left.

We all stopped thinking, moving, and almost breathing at that point. We knew each other's voices, or, at least I knew Kouhei's and he knew both mine and Yagi's, and we could both tell that that was not one of ours. The voice was calm, but also quite cold, like a father scolding his children. "You will have to be punished."

We turned towards the voice, coming from the right street on the intersection, in the direction of Levin's hiding place. We followed a bar of light, cast by the quarter moon as if the star of the show should not go unseen. Instantly, we recognized him as Levin, not only because we had been briefed, but because we could see in his eyes the insanity needed to voluntarily experiment with that which was called "monster".

He was dressed for the heat here, in a collared shirt and denim pants. However, the tattoos on him, the focusing symbols that helped him move his prana with utmost efficiency to whatever end he desired. His tall, lanky, six-two frame was quite normal in other countries, but here it would make him stand out quite a bit.

Since I was the one who took the most flippant attitude towards life-or-death situations, it wasn't surprising when I was the first of us to react.

By pulling my unsilenced pistol and pulling the trigger thrice. Each time, the weapon roared, flared, and kicked, crushing my right wrist with the force of the recoil.

I knew, however, that those bullets would almost certainly hit their target. I was trained in shooting with the right hand only, I had aimed for center mass, and the draw was probably the fastest I had ever done in my life. With the bullets moving at a good fraction of the speed of sound, possibly even supersonic, and at the paltry range of about twenty meters, there was practically no way I could miss.

However, the simple fact of the matter was that the above only applied to the general human populace and their set of skills and capabilities.

When you can close the twenty meters that separated you from the shooter in two seconds, only long enough for a bounty hunter to draw his machete, and then punch him so hard he crashes into the road, possibly breaking a few ribs, and then still have enough momentum to hold two trained Executors at bay, it is safe to assume that this being is not part of the general human populace, and easily exceeds their set of skills and capabilities.

Laid out on the floor, ribs hurting from the strike and the adrenaline barely beginning to kick in, I thought over whether calling out to Yagi and Kouhei for help would be a good idea.

And then I saw that he had brought five of The Dead as reinforcements, and that he must have been at least partly successful in his experiments, as they were attacking at a speed slightly above that of the average citizen, with all the training for combat a high school education provides.

The real threat was the supernatural fighter that Levin had become and the one of The Dead that we had been stalking, only dangerous because it was closer, and I knew that the two of them had enough on their hands without me distracting them with a yell. They had split up, forcing Levin to leave behind The Dead as they moved.

Which could only mean that I was the only one who would dispose of the six in front of me. Luckily for me, my pistol still had six rounds in the magazine.

Unluckily for me, it was dark, making it harder to aim, I was hurt, making me unsteady, and I couldn't move to open the distance, and with my lack of training in close combat, I didn't think that I would be able to kill more than one of them.

_Odds are about par for the course._ I thought. _If only I didn't always shoot bogies._


	9. The Moment of Impact

Analysis of the situation is as follows: I was knocked quite far away, with about ten meters from me to the nearest of The Dead. I still had my gun in my hand, and six bullets in the magazine, plus a few more spares I always carry. The problem was the number of shots it would take to bring them down.

The hand holding the gun, the right hand, was a little shaken, but I would manage. Biting my lip, I levelled the pistol right to the first of The Dead. From what we knew of his process, the head was the focal point for prana, so removing or damaging the head sufficiently would break the walking corpse. The burning question, though, was how much tougher the head would be, and how much damage I would have to inflict to defeat the head.

I saw the little dots placed on the top of the gun, the small colored stickers that glowed in the dark, clearly showing where the shot would be. The closest of them only now turned to look at me.

I fired three shots to the chest, attempting to hit higher up on the chest in order to try to cut the connection between head and torso. I shot three more at the hunched-over one next to the first one I shot at, and then pushed my thumb up to hit the magazine release button that I had had custom-built there. The magazine slid out, and right under it was my hand, ready to load the next. Total time to reload, half a second. Nine more rounds in the magazine. I put the gun back into a shooting position and fired.

They had already started rushing towards me then, so it was easier to hit them in the chest, almost to the neck. Neither of the ones I had shot were stopped, and they were still moving towards me. Then again, that wasn't the point. I continued firing, not even caring where I hit The Dead anymore.

After all, none of that mattered to me. They were five meters away now, and I had already used up my second magazine. I used my half-second reload again, and they were close. I could really smell their stink now, the smell of rotting corpses.

_Let's replace that smell with gunpowder._

I fired all nine rounds blindly. At this range, there was no point to aiming. I still couldn't stop them as they kept moving forwards towards me. I couldn't reload, they were too close. The adrenaline had finally kicked in, but I had nowhere to go. I couldn't get anywhere if they were almost on top of my legs. I tucked them in, forcing the closest of The Dead to come within striking range.

I raised the gun again, damn the fact that it had no ammunition.

I would have to make some.

_Remember the moment of firing. The slow squeeze of the trigger. The kick, the explosion, the bullet, the speed. The effect of the bullets hitting the cadavers, cutting through once-living flesh._

_Understand the nature of the event._

The trigger was pulled, bringing down the hammer and igniting the propellant in the casing. A small explosion occurred, ejecting the casing and sending a concentrated explosion down the barrel, pushing out the bullet. The bullet flew in a mostly straight upward trajectory for a few meters before planting itself inside the chest of one of The Dead, ending its journey. As that was happening, I pulled the trigger more times, repeating the same reaction.

_Replicate the necessary ingredients._

Using prana, I have to recreate the explosive force of gunpowder and the solid projectile bullet. The gun will take care of the rest.

_Bring forth the knowledge required for execution._

Simply put, it would be a hail of bullets, the firing of a pistol with prana, limited only by the speed of one's mind and one's Magic Circuits. There will be nothing limiting me anymore.

_Calculate the action and the reaction; make real the vision._

The Dead were on top of me. The action would be to shoot them, the reaction their defeat. Either that, or the gamble would fail and I would die.

This body trapped by the endless cycle of repetition, its magic circuits engraved with the mark of repetition of the past, recreate the vision!

The result was deafening.

"Event Repetition: Five Rounds Rapid! Pistol, Action Execute!" I yelled. As if I hadn't yelled loud enough, fighting for my life, the pistol kicked with a single, deafening explosion.

I had miscalculated. Instead of having five rounds fired from the pistol, the energy of five rounds was converted into prana and blasted as one huge magical bullet. However, it was nothing if not effective, blasting open the cadaverous head of the zombie in front of me, scattering blood and people bits all over.

That one was irredeemably destroyed, but at a cost to my body. Already I began to feel tired and ready to pass out, but I steeled myself and aimed for the next one.

"Event Repetition: Five Rounds Rapid!" The pistol roared again, kicking with the same force and bringing down another of The Dead. I was getting tired now, and both the gun and my body felt heavy. I gritted my teeth and pointed at the next one.

"Event Repetition: Five Rounds Rapid!" Another shower of gore, another of the zombies neutralized, another dose of pure exhaustion, and another point of the gun.

"Event Repetition: Five Rounds Rapid!" Again, the same outcome. I was ready to faint, but there were two more foes to deal with. Being insentient, they did not hesitate to charge me even after their allies fell.

"Bring it on!" I roared defiantly into the night, confident we could not be heard. A bounded field had been put up the moment we began fighting, preventing the people outside from hearing our scrimmage. "Event Repetition: Five Rounds Rapid!" The gun roared again, with the exact same outcome. Only one of The Dead was left.

But, with the instincts of a clever animal, it had jumped up onto me to disable and finish me off.

Insentient as it was, though, it didn't pin down my arm. Pushing the last of my strength into my right arm, I placed the gun against its forehead right before it bent down to eat me.

"Event Repetition: Five Rounds Rapid!"

Strangely, the shot was less powerful, the feeling of kick and exhaustion less than normal. The effect was the same, though, covering my shirt and the already bloody streets with another layer of decomposing gore. My arm, still holding the pistol, fell limply at my side, and I relaxed. Not even coursing adrenaline was enough to let me lift myself, and I panted on the ground, completely spent and staring up at the night, still tense.

_Yagi and Kouhei have to come back alive._ I thought. I realized that I had only fired twenty-four bullets during the original fusillade, so the last shot was four rounds rapid instead of five, but that didn't matter right now.

_Come back alive, you two. Preferably intact. _I thought as I began to rest. _I don't think I can help anymore._

Yagi Kotohime drew three Black Key hilts from the inside of her habit. Standing in the middle of the street, back-to-back with her master, she held the Black Keys in her left hand, holding a normal sword in her right. It used the same magic as the Black Keys, except that there was a metal blade already there, making it a matter of reinforcing a blade that was already there, rather than projecting a new blade to be thrown. Behind her, she knew that Kouhei had done the same.

"Careful, Yagi." He said. "We don't know where he's going to come from."

Being sent on a mission to eliminate Levin, the two of them had chased him to an alley. Running down the darkened streets, they found they were a second too slow, as the target was nowhere to be found in the darkness of the street.

"Where could he be?" Kouhei asked himself, holding a set of Black Keys in his left hand and keeping his right open, armed only with his trained muscles and his knowledge of martial arts. "Let's find out, shall we?"

Kouhei released a torrent of blaze from his Black Keys, lighting them up and immediately revealing the surrounding alley, placing it in a blaze of light that even Yagi was shocked by.

This was his gambit, that if he could strike at Levin with total surprise and extreme speed, then he would be able to unquestionably kill or maim him before he could move, an opportunity that Yagi could take to finish him off. It was a good plan, almost perfect and probably would have worked.

But as chance would have it, Levin was on top of the house to their left, waiting in the wings for them to come into the alley. He had not expected them to arrive so quickly, and the sound of their entrance had been muffled by the wind in his ears from his own jump. Since then, though, he had been on the lookout for the enemy, and was equal parts surprised and elated that his enemy had shown himself.

The situation was like this: Levin had the positional advantage of being on top of a two-storey building, however small that advantage might be against a well-trained Executor in combat mode. However, he had a moment of surprise to waste, which the Executor would use to make his move before he could counter. However, the Executor had bargained for more of a moment than he had, as Levin had already been preparing to lunge.

The result was, as is so common in life, a compromise. Kouhei got a serious but not fatal wound in, three Black Keys to the chest, piercing straight through his extremely tough body and defences.

In return, though, Levin's sweeping attack blasted him away, smashing him down into the road and into the wall of the house across the street, smashing a hole into the hollow blocks making up its sides. Crashing into the side of the building, almost collapsing at and making a tremendous noise, it was a miracle that he was still alive.

But the target was hurting. And unexpectedly, as well, as evidenced by his look of horror as he stared down at his own wounds on the roof.

Yagi did not hesitate. She would not waste the opportunity her master gave her to finish the mission. She could care for him later, but she had to strike now. Her body did not hesitate, easily following her mind into the movement.

They had always said that she was a natural, that she had no hesitation. It was true even now, when her teacher and constant companion had been fatally injured. Again, without hesitation, she rushed forward, her purpose clear, her arm strong, and her will unwavering.

An injured combatant, staring with shock at his broken body, against a fresh warrior with no fear or hesitation, and factor in the motivation she must have from just seeing her friend crushed against the wall, and you get an idea of the odds. I won't insult your intelligence by saying them out loud.

Because after all, even the greatest super-soldier, the most warped and twisted man, is still vulnerable to the weaknesses of their psyche, and even the weakest fighter can become a hero when propelled by their emotions.

Yagi lunged, straight up at the roof. Levin, too shocked to move away and too injured to do much even if he had, did not move. She landed right on top of him.

Without hesitation, without even the slightest bit of effort, she plunged all six Black Keys she was holding into the chest of her opponent, turning him into a human-shaped pincushion. Even though they were supposed to have only a minimal effect on flesh, they had thought that the constant stream of prana that he would have to be sending through his body to keep himself alive and combat-ready could be disrupted, leading to an easy kill.

Their suspicions were proven right as he spasmsed, clearly no longer in control of his own body. He tried to speak, but it came out garbled and broken as prana surged within his body, rendering muscles strong enough to rip themselves at one moment and atrophied at the next.

"Ah'LL KEALlll yeaWWWW!" The ripped, guttural screaming continued after at, but it wasn't even barely comprehensible.

Yagi continued to push Black Keys into him relentlessly and without pause, destabilizing his prana network entirely and killing him.

Three more went into his body after it stopped moving before she realized it was pointless. She had pinned him down on the roof, her knees on the somewhat cold metal roof. She was kneeling over him, looking at the twelve Black Keys she had pierced him with. The bounded spell they had placed on themselves was effective, making sure that nobody even noticed anything they had been doing.

Silence was the only thing that greeted her as she turned around and jumped down to check on her companion. But there was no need. She stood there, right where she landed, and looked at him.

Many times on the battlefield she had watched comrades and enemies die. Thanks to that, she had a very clear sense of what "too late" looked like.

This was one of those times. She looked at the broken body of her companion and friend, probably killed through breakage of the spine from crashing into those blocks.

_Probably snapped his spine instantly._ She thought, the thoughts causing barely even a flutter in her eyes. _He died, no saying anything about that. At least it was quick._

She looked away and walked on. There was still the matter of that bounty hunter, and although they had been assured of his quality, she still wasn't confident in his abilities. He had gone down with injuries at the very beginning of the fight, and his close combat wasn't up to Executor standard. For one of them, dispatching six of The Dead would have been routine, even while injured.

She had no idea what would come of this decision, and to this day she is not sure if what she did was right.

The only thing she knew was that it could never be taken back.

I had recovered enough to stand up by the time the nun came back. She seemed to be holding something, dragging it behind her.

"Where's Kouhei?" I asked her, by way of greeting. She didn't respond, only walk closer. I could see now that her movements were slower, less sure, and as she walked next to me I could see her visibly shaking. I didn't want to look at her left hand.

Preposterous as it is to say this, I didn't want to believe that someone was dead. A bounty hunter, denying the death that is his bread and butter? Ironic in the extreme.

She came closer, and I continued to avoid looking at her left hand. When she came close enough to touch, she stopped.

In the soft voice that I heard then for the first time, she said the one thing that would change my life forever.

"Dead." A voice barely above a whisper, but I heard the word as clearly as a preaching priest.

I wasn't particularly sentimentally attached to the pair of them. It would be stupid for a bounty hunter to grow attached to the people he works with, especially because he might end up having to kill them in the future. The loyalty of a bounty hunter can only be bought, never truly kept. He will follow the money, each and every time.

But these people, well, I didn't think they deserved this. They were good people with a proper cause, these Executors, which was more than I could say for myself. Compared to people like them, who fought against abominations that should not be allowed to exist, abominations that turned people into monsters, they didn't deserve to lose one of their own to that.

_You can change that._ I thought to myself. _The only thing you need is to do a repetition._

It was true. All I had to do was to repeat the event, and everything would be solved. Once I was inside, I could begin to work around what had happened here and save Kouhei.

The question was not information or capability, because I could press Yagi for details and I could repeat the event, no problem.

The problem was this. Doing this would edit out a death, would stop it from ever occurring. It was a miracle, playing god, as it were.

"Is it worth it? Are you willing to put everything on the line for a chance to become a god, for the chance to turn back time and create a miracle?"

For someone like me, with nothing to cling on to, the answer was obvious.

I walked right beside Yagi and talked to her as she kneeled on the road over the body of her companion. I asked her how he died. She didn't respond. I waited.

A few minutes later, she told me the story, how he ran into the alley, how he had attempted and failed an ambush, how Yagi had taken the opportunity, and now how she had dragged his body back.

I stood up. The situation was clear to me now, or at least, clearer.

It could be done. I took a deep breath, calling on the last reserves of prana I had. Acting on a fleeting impulse, I decided.

_All or nothing. Let's do this. Understand the nature of the event._

We came in ready for a fight, but we hadn't been prepared for Levin himself. Completely unprepared, we walked in thinking it would be a simple distraction mission. That changed when Levin himself came out to get us. We split up to take them down, myself taking on The Dead and the two of them chasing after Levin. They then tried to ambush and kill him, which would have worked perfectly had everything gone according to plan, which it didn't.

_Replicate the necessary ingredients._

Returning through time, reconstituting things, and generally resetting everything to how it was before. I considered for a second that this was against the natural order of Magecraft, that this would be a Sorcery, and that I could not possibly have enough prana to live after creating this.

And then I realized that if I pulled it off successfully, none of that mattered. And so I continued.

_Bring forth the knowledge required for execution._

Simply I needed everything. I needed to know where we were, every step, every movement. I breathed in, trying to relive the moment we had begun our patrol through the city streets, when we had still been preparing. I tried to remember exactly what we had worn, what we had brought with us, the temperature, the smell of the air. I had learned that although there was a large margin of error for repetition, the more exact the recreation the better.

_Calculate the action and the reaction; make real the vision._

I came up blank. There was no way to do any of these things. The only thing I could think to do was to trust.

Trust in the power that I had held for so long, the power that had kept me alive and well since the day I was born, the power that pushed me through day after day of endless toil.

This body, saved time and again by the endless cycle of repetition. This man, merely recreating the past to defeat the present.

This world, that seems to repeat itself ad infinitum, a world that knows only how to repeat its own mistakes. As part of the great cycle of life, the ups and downs of victory and defeat, there can only be repetition.

What's one more?

I whispered the words, like a quiet oath taken before a mission, the soft whisper that carries in it more determination than a scream on the battlefield.

"Event Repetition: The Moment of Impact."


	10. Pointless Repetition

We came in ready for a fight, but we hadn't been prepared for Levin himself. Completely unprepared, we walked in thinking it would be a simple distraction mission. That changed when Levin himself came out to get us. We split up to take them down, myself taking on The Dead and the two of them chasing after Levin. They then tried to ambush and kill him, which would have worked perfectly had everything gone according to plan, which it didn't.

_Replicate the necessary ingredients._

Returning through time, reconstituting things, and generally resetting everything to how it was before. I considered for a second that this was against the natural order of Magecraft, that this would be a Sorcery, and that I could not possibly have enough prana to live after creating this.

And then I realized that if I pulled it off successfully, none of that mattered. And so I continued.

_Bring forth the knowledge required for execution._

Simply I needed everything. I needed to know where we were, every step, every movement. I breathed in, trying to relive the moment we had begun our patrol through the city streets, when we had still been preparing. I tried to remember exactly what we had worn, what we had brought with us, the temperature, the smell of the air. I had learned that although there was a large margin of error for repetition, the more exact the recreation the better.

_Calculate the action and the reaction; make real the vision._

I came up blank. There was no way to do any of these things. The only thing I could think to do was to trust.

Trust in the power that I had held for so long, the power that had kept me alive and well since the day I was born, the power that pushed me through day after day of endless toil.

This body, saved time and again by the endless cycle of repetition. This man, merely recreating the past to defeat the present.

This world, that seems to repeat itself ad infinitum, a world that knows only how to repeat its own mistakes. As part of the great cycle of life, the ups and downs of victory and defeat, there can only be repetition.

What's one more?

I whispered the words, like a quiet oath taken before a mission, the soft whisper that carries in it more determination than a scream on the battlefield.

"Event Repetition: The Moment of Impact."

It was totally and completely different from any repetition I had ever done before. Strange, for a magecraft that involved complete and total copying to form something unique for once.

Because this time, I watched the events happen. My body out of my control, it began to repeat the movements I had done to form the repetition.

In reverse. But as if to torture me, the rewinding of time was no faster than how it had ben wound. In fact, it was probably slower, as my hands fell slowly, ritually, almost ceremonially into their position.

Whatever I decided now did not matter. Only that which was about to happen, or rather, happen again, mattered.

I watched Yagi walk backwards, a sight that was equal parts comical and unbelievable. I felt myself fall, being forced back to the ground, as if by some invisible hand that was telling me to lie down. It was a gentle push, more like a falling leaf than a rough push. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, Yagi walked backwards, turning around, and giving me a sight I thought I would never see.

_Tears falling up._ I thought. _That's new._

I didn't bother to listen to the strange, backmasked version of Yagi telling me exactly what happened. But that wasn't how it happened. I had walked to her and asked her, squatting down so that I could hear her voice. I watched her as she squatted down and spoke, the same way I had seen her but from a different angle, my view centered on the side of her body rather than her head and shoulders.

Then I realized that I wasn't rewinding through events as if I was there. I had been… removed, so to speak, from this progression of events, and was instead watching it from the sidelines, no longer myself.

_Detachment. Complete and total detachment._

I watched as I stood up and walked back, then fell back onto the ground. Yagi followed after, walking towards me and squatting down to look at me, then walking perfectly naturally and very strangely, backwards, away.

Then came the part I didn't want to feel. The waiting. All I did, and indeed, all I could do was stare forward, straight at the little elevated sidewalk, at the trash, at the point where the walls of the makeshift houses met the floor, at the trash in the streets.

The intolerable waiting, the spell burning away at my prana and making me weaker, my body heavier, trying to lull me into a deep sleep, a dark and comfortable peace.

It was just a sense; a fleeting thought, like a first impression of a person. But I was convinced that if I let my guard down and gave in to that sleep I would be lost completely and irrevocably. The darkness just felt too deep, too peaceful, like my body would immediately surrender and sink into it forever.

I forced myself to stay awake, steeled myself against the boredom, the prana slowly draining away from me. I kept mind focused, attempting to stay out of the darkness threatening to take me, even as I felt my strength slowly, slowly wane.

This sucks. I'm fighting a losing battle I can't possibly win.

What followed was utter frustration, every moment seeming longer than the last. I sat there, unmoving, unwavering, always thinking of what must be happening right now, the tension. When Yagi was still here, when she was still moving backwards in her bizarre dance that looked like a rewinding tape, I was sure that I was doing something, I was sure that my magecraft was taking effects.

But now I was lying on the ground, staring straight at a still life ahead of me, shifted only by the wind and by the movements of the moon, reversed repetitions of a dance already completed. And only now did I notice.

Only now did I notice the lack of prana slowly eating away at my limbs, numbing the sensations until they didn't feel like they existed. I already couldn't feel my legs or my arms, and already the lightheadedness was beginning to set in. In response I grit my teeth.

I stopped caring about time. My eyes were open, but I could not see. My ears were working, but they could not hear. My nose was working, but I could not smell. I was a puppet inside my own body.

It was all a blur as I fought the Dead again, only in reverse. They flew forwards to my position as I put my pistol to their heads, watching the parts of them reconstitute and fly back together before moving away, in a strangely comical retreat that had all the speed and killing intent of a charge, only moving in the wrong direction.

I was shocked. It was completely absurd, watching gunshots fly backwards and zombies reconstitute themselves, the blood and guts that I had been lying in flying back into the bodies they belonged to. It was so surreal that my eyes blurred, probably themselves doubting that they were seeing something real and not a hallucination.

It didn't matter. Cruel mistresses that they were, time and reality continued to move forwards, or rather, backwards. As such, my eyes were treated to surreal sights, available only to those with recordings of zombies exploding in real life, barely a meter from their own heads, with a gun that was out of ammunition.

Precious few people, now that I thought about it.

The moment went by, I heard Yagi and Kouhei's footfalls as they returned to the scene of the beginning of the battle. I snapped back into position, moving up along the wall of the house I had been slumped on.

And then I was forcefully drawn forward, right up to Levin's arm as he punched me with his amazing strength. I was forced to relive the slow and excruciating moment of pain that he put me though, the shock that broke ribs and crushed internal organs with the force. But in a second, it all disappeared like it was just a dream, pulling me forward to a standing position and Levin flying back, launched by the repetition.

Our heads snapped back to ignore Levin, and we walked backwards, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

We continued to move backwards, surreally undoing our kill on the first of The Dead. Watching wounds seal up while they were cut open, watching Black Keys fly backwards, hilt-first, away from their target.

And finally, we continued to walk backwards until we reached the house.

_Event repetition: Complete. _

Time began to move forward again. Instead of walking backwards we were walking forwards, myself in the lead, and the two in the back as if we had only started our patrol.

It was a good thing they were behind me.

If they could see the way I smiled, my grin wide open as if begging for more, they would have certainly thought that I was crazy.

I wasn't entirely sure that the last part of that statement was inaccurate. And strangely, I didn't seem to mind the possibility.


	11. End of the Reprieve

I might have said "real world", but those were just the ideals we were fighting for.

The fight itself, a match between two Servants, was a truly mind-boggling thing to behold. The speed with which they moved their blades was exquisite and amazing, such combat artistry that I barely tear my eyes away.

It was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was a sublime action, where every strike was placed with almost perfect precision, every move made with near-clarivoyant knowledge of both themselves and their opponent.

The red spear, moving within inches of the red knight's body, yet repulsed by a blur of white and black. The blurs of white and black, returning to strike before being repulsed by a dismissive wave of the red spear. The elegance of it all, with neither Servant gaining ground or giving it, a stalling action that both did with such perfection that there was no way either could ride an ebb or flow and turn the tide of battle.

I had seen and understood the concept of many things in my life. But this was one thing I was sure that, no matter how much I understood it, I could never repeat the true essence of such a flawless, graceful action. No matter how many other things I could comprehend and immediately perfect, this was something I knew I never could.

But now was not the time for admiration. Lancer jumped back, disengaging from the fight.

His red spear pointed down to the ground, the menacing aura beginning to manifest again.

"Master, permission to use that?" He asked, his voice barely containing a bloodlust that he probably never even tried to hide, only showing the barest of restraints as he knew of our history.

"Yes, Lancer. End him." I felt the malicious, killing intent, the curse on the spear beginning to take effect. Archer, recognizing what was about to happen, immediately sprang forward to attempt to stop the attack, but I could see from the sidelines that it was too late.

The red spear, like a rocket, was loaded.

She reached the battlefield, a meteor of blue in the night. She summoned the golden bar of power that was the proof of her kingship. Barely a week ago she would have refused to draw this sword for the sake of her Master.

Now she drew it proudly, brandishing the golden blade with a clarity of purpose that she had not known for a long time.

Her Master had changed all of that. In that short of a time, she had proven herself entirely worthy of being served by the blade from the Lady of the Lake.

The way she planned, in order for her students to achieve their goals. How she used their conflicting personalities against each other, even as she regretted that this was the only way. This War that they had been assigned to, the balanced thinking and conflict it required each team to have.

Against her will, she had had to force her students to go against one another, forcing them into conflict. She had to have them counterbalance one another's personalities, which would necessitate conflict between the two. Much as she wanted them to be happy together, the nature of this War made it so that that was not possible.

It was one day, about a week before the beginning of the War, in the penthouse they had rented. Sylvia was drawing up plans while Saber was watching, on the alert for any danger.

"Saber." She had said. "You must hate me for what I'm doing, messing with the feelings of my students like this."

Coming from the mouth of someone who was known to be as reckless and gregarious as Sylvia Trenton, hearing such things was unimaginable. As a person who was always sure of herself, always making the correct move, she could not be conceived as having any regrets, charging forward no matter what the situation.

This… this was completely unprecedented. Even in the short time she had known her Master, she had sensed quickly enough that she was a person who was completely sure of herself, the kind of person with no regrets. Even down to the summoning ritual, she had not been fazed at all when she had presented herself in front of her.

She had merely directly asked for her class.

"Not at all, Master." Saber replied, even if she did have some misgivings about it.

"I just want you to know, Saber, that I am only doing this for their own good." Sylvia had said, not looking at Saber but instead continuing to look at the runes that she was sketching. "I don't want them to fight, but if they're going to come up with a half-decent strategy, they'll have to do it together, using Brian's carefulness and a bit of Clare's impetuousness. My runes, my help, I can only do so much." She said. She finally looked up at Saber, staring at her as if begging for understanding. Her eyes were wide open, pleading after the truth.

There was no fear in those eyes, there was only the silent prayer for salvation.

As someone who has no choice but the worst choice always has.

Saber understood this, and she nodded, silent yet saying much. And then, out of curiosity, she queried her Master.

"Master, if I may ask, what is that?" Saber asked, referring to the plans she had been drawing up for the last hour or so.

"Those are the beginning sketches for my bounded field. It will be my way of protecting my students from their trial." She said.

For the Master who had protected her students with that much valor, it was an honor to swing her blade.

"EX!"

Before her was a black behemoth, a twelve-foot-tall monster she may have known only from legends, or one which she may have met in the past Wars in which she was part.

It didn't matter. For her code, and for the Master she believed worthy of adhereing to that code, she would crush that monster.

"CALIBUUR!"

She rushed forward, aiming her blade directly at the great, black monster that she was fighting. Even though the big behemoth was already just shrugging off Caster's attacks, they both knew that a single, high-power hit from Excalibur would put Berserker at least onto the brink of death if nothing was done.

Impossibly, the gigantic axe-sword moved from twenty feet in the air, raised to strike, and almost instantaneously repositioned to hold the gigantic beam of destructive light at bay.

The golden light crashed down on the black axe, its destructive power mitigated somewhat by the physical barrier of the gigantic rock weapon. The explosion rocked the city, as well as pushing out a wave of sound, wind, and heat. The power was comparable to a large explosive charge, capable of wiping out a city block, at least.

The golden light faded, Berserker and his axe-sword looking quite worse for the wear. Saber, was standing and still fresh, while Brian and Caster were still hurling blasts of magic with which to distract Berserker, who already had a resistance.

Could any of them be blamed for missing the whooshing of weapons like missiles until it was too late?

Thankfully, it was before the curse was complete that Lancer pulled up his red spear, and Archer stopped his rush. That was because Kouhei and I had seen a force far more worthy of fighting than one another. Or, as the European nations of history gone by were wont to do, to ally against anything considered a greater power.

We watched as the falling missiles from the sky crashed down, tearing holes in the ground and turning that area of the park into a dead zone, like a blasted no-man's land from the First World War.

Or it would, were it not for the golden light that shielded the ground, leaving all the weapons to blast harmlessly on the shining surface of the golden barrier, effortlessly absorbing all of the force.

And then we knew that whoever came out of this conflict had to die if one of us was to win.

"My king." Professor Hayden said, slightly bitterly, both at the results of the attack and at the attacker. "We have a problem."

"I will see to it myself." The golden king said, and looked down at the park. He had seen the great column of golden light that had speared the night, and was now looking down at the results of his fire.

The golden dome of protection shone in the night, resplendent like a gem in the velvet of night.

"My king, what do we do?" Hayden asked.

"We go towards them." The golden king said. "It would be impolite not to greet a fellow ruler who enters my garden."

The great ship began to fall, slowly, to the ground, in a graceful and controlled descent.

"Oh crap." I said, looking up at the ship that was slowly entering the battlefield. I turned towards Kouhei.

"We can settle this later. We have to survive now." I said.

"Agreed." He said, running into the building next to us to conceal himself. I followed suit, our Servants trailing us.

But strangely, Archer had said not a word. Normally, he'd have a smart retort at the ready for any situation, a kind word, a rebuke, anything.

One look at his face, though, and I knew that he was seriously going to keep silent. He knew something. It was in the way his lips were twitched in displeasure, the way he gritted his teeth as though he knew something bad was going to happen.

My studies on the Fuyuki Grail War were clearly insufficient.


	12. A Moment Before Collision

I watched, Kouhei beside me, as the great ship began to slowly fall from the sky. On the deck I could see Professor Hayden standing there, head bowed and in apparent deference.

On the very prow of the ship was a man in golden armor, golden hair that stood up, and looked perfect for the great ship.

In short, he was golden. This was a man who reigned supreme, a fact that was obvious in his confident stance, as if mocking those who would harm him to come and try, as he was standing on the prow of his ship, completely exposed to any attacker.

Then again, there would also be no attacker intimidated by the fact that he was riding on a flying ship, as well as posing with supreme confidence, dismissing attackers with his aura of defiance, as if he knew full well that anything that attacked him would be immediately retaliated against and destroyed. His eyes were clear, fixated on only one thing in front of him, his stature conveying such extreme confidence that it was impossible not to be cowed.

And his eyes were fixed on the point on the ground that was once a golden dome of light, now pulling back to reveal the king and warrior within.

She was pretty shocking. After all, a petite girl, shorter than I am, with blonde hair tied up in a bun and in a dress, festooned with armor plates that made her look more like a samurai than a knight from the Middle Ages, if it weren't for her straight sword. But that didn't matter.

Her back was straight, unbowed and unbroken. Standing in the midst of the broken and destroyed park, she was a paragon of knightly strength, a hero beyond all measure. Pure and strong as she was, she glared at the golden king, as if to show a quiet determination in the face of overwhelming force.

But her grip on her sword told me well enough that she would not go quietly. The two who had turned into prana tanks said nothing, their bodily functions probably still taken over by their emotions, but recognizing that the golden one in front of them was an extremely large threat. Because of that, and only because of that, they held off. In the other corner, the Berserker was already beginning to heal his wounds, and his Master was mentally preparing for round two.

Although why she was staring at the slowly descending golden king, an ally who she should not have been surprised to see, was anyone's guess.

The silence was stretching as the two sides grew closer. Eventually, I knew that this situation would have to be broken, the sides would parley, and the battle would begin once more. And the only thing that maintained the silence was the distance between the golden one and his ship and the eyes of the defiant Saber.

Slowly, almost as if it was a leisurely stroll, the flying ship reached a point just a few meters off the ground, allowing the Servants to finally speak face to face.

The silence had maintained itself until this moment, but now I knew that it could be no more. The girl tightened her grip on her sword as he came closer, almost as if there were words unspoken yet understood going between them.

Finally, the golden king's ship stopped, and as I thought he would, he spoke.

"Saber-chan! How nice to meet you again!"

Clearly, my studies on Fuyuki were woefully insufficient. The both of them stood there, facing one another, as if they already knew what was going on.

"Again, I would like to extend an invitation to you, Saber." The golden king said, standing on the helm of his ship, and with utmost confidence. "At my side, we will crush the unworthy mongrels around us." He said.

I could've sworn that his eyes moved towards us as he spoke, and that he sneered at our weakness as he turned back and continued his sales pitch.

"The world will be ours; my garden yours to enjoy! Together, we shall partake of the greatest pleasures of this life, sweeping away all the distasteful things!" He gestured, indicating the silent city, the two vengeful magi behind Saber, everything. He continued. "Everything… everything and anything at all will be within your grasp!" He said, ending his pitch.

The girl said nothing, as if she had heard the whole pitch before, holding her sword. For a second, I thought that she would finally accept. But I was wrong.

"I have no intention of coming to any agreement with a king like you." Saber said. "A king exists just as much for their subjects as he does for himself." She said. She didn't make any large movements, instead choosing to make her point with the defiance of her stance and the steadiness of her voice.

A quiet, determined resistance guaranteed to challenge the taller, more gregarious one. Sure enough, it did.

"I know that I should be more restrained and mature, but it's just that I'm used to getting what I want." He said, a bit of a sharper tone in his voice now. "You will be mine."

Even from my position on the balcony across the street, I could feel the icy chill that came out of Saber's unwavering glare. From that moment on the answer was clear. But as if to make her point, her words were even more chilling.

"I suppose it can't be helped that a king is sometimes spoiled like a child." She said. "Distasteful in the extreme."

Instead of looking irked, though, as I thought he would, the king seemed amused by his paramour's rejection.

"Hoho, Saber. Do I have to show you what it means to resist me again?" He asked, weapons beginning to appear behind him. From this moment on, there was no turning back.

Saber readied herself and the two magi raised their arms, ready for a fight. She had said her piece, all that there was left to do was to defend it.

The unreal dance began again, but with four combatants instead of two. The great mound of flesh threw himself against the swordswoman, while Brian and Caster were forced to move by the sudden and immediate barrage opened up by the golden king, another set of blasts rocking the park. Every participant moved with inhuman speed, strength, and grace, the whirling yet precise strokes of the gigantic axe-sword ripping the very air apart, only to be stopped by the girl, her golden blade now hidden with a wreath of air. The other pair was all dancing lights and fast movement, as entire sectors of the park were blown up with arcing beams of energy or a flying weapon. Moving at blistering speeds, both sides in the conflict were moving too fast to be more than the light that surrounded them, the two bathed in blue, the color of their righteous fury, and one covered by a green haze, concealing the ship he commandeered. The bolts of light they shot either concealing a weapon or crackling with magical energy, the effects indistinguishable as they crashed into the scenery, their shooters evading every attack the other made in an attempt to claim a hit, which would be fatal to either party.

I watched them streak around, blasting away at each other, and at every turn destroying a part of the city, slowly destroying it bit by bit. The bounded field still held, insulating the outside world from the common-sense defying existences that were Servants, and the destruction they wreaked upon the park and the surroundings.

I must have been one of the few people to bear witness to the craters in the park, the blasts of energy and Noble Phantasms that crashed against the walls of houses and buildings without remit or mercy, sometimes taking out entire floors with single beams, with five more crashing into the building, worthless, throwaway shots.

I stared as the weapons crushed more buildings, and I wondered how many people should have died, just for this petty war between the factions of the world of magic.

I had come prepared to kill magi. I had not come prepared to slaughter families in their sleep along the way.

Beside me, Archer gritted his teeth at the sight, barely restraining himself as he knew that provoking either side would get us killed.

But there was something in the way that he stared out, ignoring everyone else in the building, that struck me as odd. He gritted his teeth, but it seemed directed towards something besides the priest and his Servant in the room.

_The desert. The wind whips at me, sand covering the ground as far as I can see. Not only that, but I can see blades, poking out of the ground, each one a sword of unmatched quality, waiting for a wielder._

I saw Archer's gaze fall to the battle ahead of us, and I thought that I might not be so alone in my wish to stop this madness.

_The gears in the background continued to grind on, producing more swords that would invariably await a hero to hold them, to wield them, to use them to protect and defend._

I stared back out to the outside, where the battle was taking place. The action in the air had slowed down a little as each side tried to out-maneuver the other, while the situation on the ground was the same as ever, the black warrior too battle-crazed to care much about defensive tactics. I still wasn't surprised that the city was getting ripped to shreds.

_I want to pick up one of those swords and run those Servants through._

It was preposterous, but the thought rose in my head unbidden. I knew it could never happen, and I knew that I would get myself killed for the trouble.

But I also knew that this urge could not be denied.

The black giant did not realize that the best he could do was to stall this girl, although he would do that very effectively. After all, with their functionally unlimited stamina, they could go on forever like this.

But as soon as she pulled out the sheath of light Griselda knew she had no chance. From here on out, her opponent could attack unharassed, and eventually Berserker would be overwhelmed by the sheer force of her opponent's relentless attack.

She raised her hands.

Yagi stalked her prey through the night, silently moving between the lights to avoid detection. Trained for so long by the Executor branch of the Church, she was an absolute master at the art of stealth.

Running silently along the city streets, between the glare of the streetlights, she followed her target.

Sylvia Trenton. The girl who created the bounded field around this small area, the one who had isolated the Grail War from the world. Smart woman that she was, she had built it so that it would stay up even if she died.

Perfect for Yagi's purposes. _The woman doesn't know how to think._ She thought.

This Grail War, more so than the last, was quite the gentleman's affair. Sportingly for such a large organization that had been so grievously offended, the Magi association sent Sylvia in order to facilitate a contained, less destructive War. Creating a bounded field, she prevented the people of the city from noticing, or being harmed at all by the battle. It was a work of art, and one of true mastery.

But even this was not enough for the Holy Church. After the fiasco involving Kirei Kotomine, the Church had decided that no Grail Wars were to be prosecuted anymore. Although firm in its stand, the Holy Church dared not antagonize the Magi Association with the immediate command to stop research into using the Holy Grail to reach The Root.

However, they were sure that this was the only such Grail in the world. If it were to be destroyed as a by-product of the War, then there could be no accusations.

Kouhei's role was to end the Grail. Yagi's role was to end the witnesses.

Sylvia Trenton was a difficult, but not impossible target. She moved on the sidewalk, pounding the pavement as she moved towards the park. Still having two Command Spells, she was a dangerous opponent, and a competent magi witness that had to be silenced.

Silencing things being Yagi's speciality. With the agility of a cat, she moved between the light, slowly gaining on Sylvia. The distance shortened from fifty meters, to twenty, to ten, and then to five.

Finally, though, Yagi reached Sylvia's back. Within an arm's reach, and without a single trace of detection, she reached forward.

The knife was already in her right hand, and she stuck it mercilessly into Sylvia's neck, right at the jugular. Without mercy she used her prana to disrupt Sylvia's, stopping her body from taking any action.

The strange thing was that before she had been attacked, she had been panting, and so now her mouth was open, but as she lay dying there was no scream. The shaking and spasms of death, though, were clearly felt.

Yagi left the knife in as they ended, then stood up. The knife was a smaller Black Key, so she would have no need to clean the blade.

What only mattered now was to clean up the ending. With that in mind, Yagi walked forward into the night.

Up on the ship, the professor saw her gesture and understood. He raised his left hand.

"My king, an enemy of the highest quality, who will not yield, stands before our follower! Destroy her!"

The golden king turned around towards the Professor. His red eyes burned with hatred, countenance showing surprise and a burning destructive impulse at the insolence of his Master. He turned around.

Another red light flashed on his Master's hand, and he sullenly obeyed. Breaking off from the swerving and weaving flight pattern he had used to fight Caster and her Master, who were by now steadily weakening, the prana they were using running low.

His ship pivoted an impossible amount and aligned itself into an attack heading against the girl and the Berserker. In his hand, the whirling star of creation appeared, a spinning cylinder of black and red about two meters long.

With a screaming descent, the great flying ship began its attack run on the park, the whirling star of creation adding to the din of a swooping ship with the whining grind of its spinning.

All this noise drowned out the most emotionally charged noise at the time, a single scream.

"How dare you order your king around, mongrel! I will have your head! I will not even dirty my hands with your blood, but I shall toss you to the unworthy and watch as you are ripped apart!"

The golden king's scream was not heard as he plunged into the battle. Beneath him, in the park, just as much was happening. The golden light of the lake had once again been unsheathed.

"EX-" The girl said, raising her sword high above her head, the black giant attempting to strike, but failing as she sprang back over the park.

"CALIBUUUR!" She screamed, letting the sword down in a pillar of light and destructive power.

That should not have destroyed the black giant. On the average it would have taken one life, maybe two, three at most. Even though he had five lives to spare, though, it had killed him.

Such is the power of a command to win from a respected leader, driving an honourable knight forward through to victory. Such is the conviction that drives forward these nonsensical beings known as Servants. The girl looked up and saw the ship bear down on her, watching her ally, the Caster, shoot beams after it in an attempt to stop it. She knew, however, that that was not going to happen.

She raised her sheath and put up her ultimate shield, the protection of a paradise world and a world where all was well against the start hat destroyed creation itself.

Such was the battle that was about to take place, the main event of the night, as it were. The collision of the greatest powers in the game, taking place as the clock moved closer to midnight.

I looked on, my expression grim and teeth gritted as the titanic collision was about to begin.


	13. This Ridiculous, Endless War

It was a whirling pillar of black night and red lines of light, a primordial force that reminded one of the beginning of the world, evoking a powerful sense of repulsion at the mess from which we came.

Opposing it was a dome of golden light, sign and symbol of all of the things humans did to raise themselves from the blackness that opposed the golden dome. Ideals, dreams, hope, love, devotion, the things that humans believe set them apart from the primordial truth of the world, those were the things that the girl put into the golden dome as she faced the whirling pillar that was her opponent.

Screaming, grinding and gnashing away at the wind with the ship right behind it, the black pillar began to fall.

The golden light shone as brightly and as strongly as ever, the light forming a defense that let not even other light through, such that the lady of the sword was blocked out by the radiant golden light.

It was so loud that there was no sound. It was so destructive that there was no visible explosion, only the wave of air that burst forth from the point of impact, destroying the scenery, uprooting trees, breaking, crushing, destroying, rending. Tree trunks and pavement chunks alike flew in the air from the force of the attack, soil, earth, and shocks of air joining them in flying outwards from the point of impact.

The shock wave was strong enough to stagger me even though only my head was hit. How the building I was in and the ones around it survived the onslaught is beyond me. But we were standing, and as I looked back at the combatants, it was a terrible and beautiful sight.

"Come, Saber, you cannot stand against me!" The golden king yelled, or at least that was what I read from his lips, the noise drowned out by the whirling maw that was his cylindrical sword. I could feel the knight's emotion in the light, grim and showing only disdain for her opponent as she resisted with all her might, ready to strike back. The clash continued to generate a harsh white light, such that it hurt to look at the point of impact, as well as a bloodcurdling noise that brought out man's primal fears at the very depths of his existence, dredged back up to the surface.

Such was the intensity of the battle between worlds. I could feel the depth of their belief in their own worlds, each one fighting with all their heart for the beliefs that they held.

The avaricious golden king, taking to satisfy his hedonism. The austere knight, depriving herself so as to feed her people. The virtue of living life and the virtue of self-sacrifice.

That was what fought in front of me. Little did I know at the time that that moment already heralded the end.

The girl could feel it. The overwhelming weight of her failures was upon her. The slight girl who held the golden sword, who raised aloft the dome of golden light that was able to deny the avaricious golden king what he wanted, and the same golden light that even for just a few seconds, repelled the Star that Splits apart Creation, the Sword of Rupture, Ea.

It is unimaginable to think that this girl had in any way failed, but looking at it from her perspective her failures were painfully obvious.

She had vowed to protect her Master and all of her comrades. In the process of attempting to do so she had realized that two of them had already been killed without her knowledge, two had used up all they had to fight the opponent that had been designated, and now she knew that there was absolutely nothing she could do anymore.

She could feel it through the Command Spells, feeling the line of power that anchored her to this world disappear. She knew at that moment that she had failed.

Her Master had fallen. There was nothing more that tied her to this world. She had fought her hardest, exerting every effort to protect the people around her. She would have completely changed the strategy, and there was no way that she would have done what she had done now, charging straight into the fray instead of attempting to extract her own.

But her Master's Command Spell had been her undoing. She had told Saber to win the War no matter what. And now she and all of her allies were dead.

It was a tragedy that the knight could do nothing to prevent, and the same went for the crushing despair that came with it.

Standing in the golden light of Avalon, the knight revelled in her own failure, and of the many, many times before that her spirit had been crushed, her plans broken, and herself routed.

And at that moment, within the paradise, the Everdistant Utopia that was Avalon, she shed a single tear.

In that moment, she shattered the truth that it was. For Avalon was never a defence or a shield of any kind, it was a world apart from the world, a concept which only existed if it was believed in. It was a paradise, a world apart from the world sustained by willpower and faith. In the shedding of that tear, the world ceased to be paradise, the taint of pain, suffering, and despair corroding the world from the top before shattering it like a glass bowl hitting the ground.

For a moment, she saw her end in the whirling black-and-red sword that she had been facing, the Star of Creation that she had stood against, the primal fear and destruction and oblivion that existed within it, which seemed to reflect her broken dreams and the nothing that they contained.

In the last moment before the knight was crushed by the whirling blade a proverb she had never really known the meaning of until now popped into her mind.

_"Death is just a new beginning."_

And that was the end of her.

It happened in an instant, but that instant was enough to elicit its own flurry of action.

In an instant the golden light that protected the girl simply fell apart, leaving her to suffer the wrath of the Star of Creation.

Thankfully, though, the damage was mostly limited by the strength of the barrier beforehand. Nevertheless, the attack still created a devastating strike, levelling the whole park and creating a pressure wave that was so strong it physically knocked me back. We all knew that there would be nothing left of the little-girl knight, and that she would most undoubtedly have been eliminated. That action in itself was a complete game-changer, not only because of its effects but also because of the new balance of power.

First, Caster and her Master were blasted away, the light that they had been exuding fading immediately. Their prana was depleted from shooting off so much magic. If they somehow survived their long fall, there was no way that they could be battle-ready within the night. They were, for all intents and purposes, out of the battle.

Secondly, the golden king immediately released a weapon towards his Master, a supersonic missile that struck right at his heart, leaving no room for error or continued life. The spear going right through his body, he was irrevocably dead.

Lastly, there was the matter of Kouhei and myself. Without any sort of coordination or planning we moved as one, Lancer kicking forward to attack the golden king and Archer pulling out the bow and the same threaded arrow as before, his expression grim as he took the shot.

I saw, for a moment there, the figure of a vaguely familiar orange-headed teenager that I had read about in the Fuyuki Grail War. He had been a member of the archery club at his school, but I couldn't think of any other thing that made him stand out. One of the pictures I had seen of him was one of him aiming a bow.

_He looks just like that kid._ I thought, as Archer loosed his screw-like projectile, the Caladbolg II, as the link between Master and Servant told me. The stance, the angle of the arms, they way he held his bow, all the same. My eyes followed the projectile as it arced into the night, blasting with glorious effect against the side of the golden ship. The golden king looked up just in time to see the blue spearman, the hound of hell, rushing towards him. You could hear him scream at us mongrels for daring to touch his ship from the other end of what used to be the park.

"We're not going to do any good here, Archer! Let's go!" I rushed down the stairs, Archer taking the more direct balcony route. The golden king, distracted by the blue spearman, did not move the ship, instead engaging the spearman with a mask of rage.

"How dare you, dog that you are, lay feet on my ship and assault me! Die, failure scum!" He yelled, drawing weapons from the ether with which to engage the blue spearman. The spearman responded, "I don't like people who are all talk." He said, pushing himself forward and clashing his spear with two legendary blades. "Prove that you're better than just throwing spears and swords." The golden king's face further contorted into a mask of rage as I charged forward with Archer into the fray.

The battle of Servants would never end. This ridiculous battle that destroyed all it touched would not end until every Servant was dead.

I wasn't sure how I felt about that.


	14. Repetition and Logical Decision

It was purely a matter of tactical advantage. First of all, we had the blue spearman who was, in essence, a shock troop. The golden king, despite his awesome power, was still an Archer. Moving into close combat would put him outside of his "power range" and make him a lot more vulnerable to attacks at that range, attacks that the blue spearman could deliver easily.

With his quick movements and immense strength with a weapon, he could effectively pin down the golden Archer, putting all of his effort into deflecting the rapid-fire blows coming from the ferocious spearman. The golden king realized this, his face forming a grim expression that told all who beheld it he knew exactly what situation he was in. Grim and unresponsive, what made him speak was none of the physical difficulties he was facing.

Of all things, it was the taunting and jibes from the blue spearman that pushed him to rage.

"Oi, golden bastard." The spearman began, punctuating his words with strikes from his lance, all the while wearing a smile oozing with arrogance and the joy of battle. "Where's all your swagger now? For all your arrogance, you're not actually that good at fighting, are you?"

His eyes and nostrils flared with rage as he responded and deflected an attack, "Dare you doubt your king, mongrel? Lay down and die for your insolence."

_Big words for someone who's about to die._ I thought. _You've got nowhere to run._ I nodded as my Archer drew the bow he carried, aiming at the golden knight. There was no love lost between myself and the blue spearman, and if I antagonized him in the process of defeating the golden king as quickly and efficiently as possible, then so be it. I nodded.

For a second, staring at the whirling, twirling storm of blades, the unreal speed and grace that I should have gotten used to in my days of watching Servants fight, I hesitated. Was this really something I should be interrupting, something that I could just waltz in and attack into? Was this duel, this show of strength above and beyond the reach of most, this exhibition of the limits of humanity and an inspiration to us all, was it something I had the right to interrupt?

Although right up to the last second these doubts swirled around in my head they stopped with the releasing of the bowstring, the same threaded arrow arcing through the air at the battle on the crippled ship. From that point on, it was the point of no return, the one point where I could have held back and enjoyed the moment of the fight gone.

For the first time since beginning to see the nonsensical conflicts I faced, I had decided to act. From the moment I had not stopped Archer from doing what he wished, I had tacitly decided on his course of action.

All this time I had always believed in heroes, in people who would save us from the darkness and despair that was everyday life and physical limitation. I had always thought that there would be people who would save us from the darkness, leading us all to a brighter future, as heroes, even if not always as warriors.

As this Grail War had proceeded, though, from the summoning of Heroic Spirits all the way down to the current situation, I realized that these so-called "heroes" were nothing more than destroyers glorified by myth and legend, Warriors and horribly human and fallible one and all, I finally understood that there was nothing that could change the flow of the world.

Nothing save one. The Holy Grail.

And if I had to push Archer to the very limit to obtain it and trample all of the things that I had once found to be worth it, that would be just fine. I knew he agreed with me, because for just a second I saw it again.

The field full of blades was actually a valley, a single pass. I looked forward, and there was the imposing figure of Archer, standing within a circle of blades, elevated from the valley floor. His back was to me, his hair flying out in the red sky of his Reality Marble. I said nothing, so he took the initiative.

"Look behind you." He said, without even turning around or acknowledging me. I turned around.

I saw the home on which I had read so much in my studies on Fuyuki, the Japanese-style home of Emiya Shirou, once owned by the Fourth Grail War participant Emiya Kiritsugu. Within, I could see figures moving about, shadows on the paper of the doors on the outside.

To be completely honest, I didn't get it.

I turned around to Archer to ask what all of this meant, hoping for an answer. And then as I turned around, I noticed why Archer stood higher than me, even if we were about the same height in real life.

He was standing on a pile of skulls, bones, and corpses, Blades buried in the sand next to him, in the rock walls of the cavern, in the bodies of those he had slain, he stood there, ready for the next wave.

In that moment, I understood.

Protect those for whom you care, never considering the cost.

Strike with all your heart; accept only victory.

Never forget that you yourself are damned, but those who live yet carry hope.

Those were the things I saw in that moment, the armoured figure of my Servant facing the sun, his red coat almost invisible in the red light of the eternal sky. In the background, I could see the brown gears that kept his life running, the essential truths that kept him alive, that gave him something to live for.

I knew nothing of his trials, but I knew the length and breadth of the things that he had done to save the world, both before and after becoming the Counter Guardian that he was. Identity still tenaciously kept secret, he showed me everything that he had gone through. At the end of that rush of images, three words rose unbidden to my lips, breaking free of their cage without any effort.

"Unlimited Blade Works." I whispered, so quietly that only I could hear it.

Was it a moment? Was it eternity? I cannot say. But the last thing I remember from the telepathic link I shared with Archer at that moment was him saying one line, one line that he seemed to have said so many times before, indicated by how naturally he said it.

"Can you keep up with me?" He asked. At the end of that simple sentence, the vision was no more.

Before me, the projectile arced through the sky, about to hit the battling Servants. And at that moment I knew that I had already decided my fate.

I watched in slow motion as the arrow descended upon the two Servants. Engrossed in the fight, they exchanged blows at lightning speed, without any sort of care about the surroundings. One enraged, the other ecstatic, they clashed atop the broken airship, blades dancing in a storm that engrossed both of them fully and completely. The arrow was in the middle of the sky now, and as the blue spearman whirled around, it happened.

The moment of truth, when a person's life changes because of one, irrevocable decision.

Somehow, I saw his eyes, how they moved towards the spear and knew that it was coming for him. I knew that he would move to dodge it, and that he would come for us after he made sure that the golden king would be nothing but ripped-apart energy and dust. I saw it in a moment, the fleeting second when my eyes met his.

_He's going to kill me._ That much I knew from that statement. _There's no way he's not going to kill me._

I could easily repeat the arrow's attack, striking at multiple points around the spearman to make sure he couldn't come close to me. It would be easy. I didn't even need to hit him; I only had to put down enough explosions to vaporize both him and the golden king by repeating the attack. Even if I failed that, it would still give Archer enough time to react to what was going to happen, probably keeping myself alive a few more seconds. It was so easy, and it was so riskless. It was self-preservation against a rampaging warrior, so it was perfectly justified. There was only one thing holding me back.

_What do you value more? _I asked myself. _On one hand, you have the power of Servants, beings beyond the normal of humanity, and what that entails. You get to watch everything, the glorious victory, the crushing defeat, all like it's so much larger than the life it truly is. On the other hand, you have all of the devastation they're inflicting, the city they're destroying with their power. I know for sure that they could kill you and everyone else in this town if they tried. If it weren't for the bounded field, there wouldn't be a city left._

_Experience or existence. Those are my choices._ Enjoy the experience and live the day, or break and destroy to save the world?

The choice is obvious. I stretch out my hand to the sky, towards the arrow, and begin to say the words.

_Understand the nature of the event._

More than just an attack and a way to end the Servants in front of me, this is also my word and choice. In the past, there were things I wanted to protect, believing that ideals were above all. Therefore, for me, being able to summon a Servant, the crystallization of an ideal, and to get paid for it was a dream job. Not so anymore, now that I've seen the horror and devastation they can inflict.

I don't want that. I will end that.

_Replicate the necessary ingredients._

It's simple enough to recreate such an action. The mental link I share with Archer will allow me to see inside the projection, and that will easily be enough. Prana's the only thing I need, and with the ability and knowledge to make a completely perfect recreation of the attack, I won't need much of even that.

_Bring forth the knowledge required for execution._

A knowledge of projectile physics, arcs, and falling speeds, plus envisioning all of the different possibilities that the falling arrow presented and choosing the ones with the best ends, causing the largest blasts in an inescapable pattern around the battle. Deviations, although unaccounted for, probably won't even be significant at this point, with the arrow falling almost vertically downwards. There would be no holes in this final attack.

_Calculate the action and the reaction; make real the vision._

All the variables are accounted for. The battle lines are drawn. And I have, once and for all, decided.

This ends now.

I put out my right arm like one would hold a sword, straight up and pointed right at the threaded arrow Archer let loose, the one called "Caladbolg II", the object of my repetition. I put my left hand on my right elbow, in order to help focus the prana and support my hand as I held it up.

"This cannot continue." I said, gritting my teeth as the prana began to feed back, forming loops that began to extend out towards the arrow, preparing to repeat it. "This beautiful, senseless war cannot continue!"

_Begin repetition._

The arrow, seemingly falling perfectly steadily, split into six on its way down. One of them was the original. The other five, each deviating slightly from the first, was a perfect repetition of the projection of the original, paths deviating ever so slightly from the original in order to turn the hull that the Servants were fighting on into a smoking crater.

Both the blue spearman and the golden king were far too engrossed with each other to notice the single arrow. However, with the huge prana increase in the area after I repeated the projection, they could not help but turn their heads towards the attack. I still had to admire them, because in the split-second they had between the impact of the arrows and the moment they saw the threaded heads, the Servants still kicked off at a ridiculous speed, attempting to escape.

I still admired and saluted their determination, even though I knew there was no way they would survive. In a beat, not even a moment, but only a beat, all six arrows blasted against the deck of the flying ship, creating an explosion that consumed the entire front of the elegant construct.

The light, heat, and noise were just what you would expect from an explosion that large. All at once, there was blinding white light, a deafening roar, and the pressure blast that knocked me off my feet, and into something hard and metallic that was standing behind me, where there wasn't before. I cover my eyes, letting the huge power of the explosion run its course.

Eventually, it died down, as all explosions do. I uncovered my eyes to see that there was nothing there anymore. There wasn't even a trace of the ship, or the Servants who had been so valiantly duelling on it. There was absolutely nothing to suggest that there had been anything there.

And at that moment, I realized exactly what I had done. I had become someone who rejects the world entirely, believing only in himself.

The experience of seeing Servants fighting is a beacon of hope, showing that humans can always be more than what they believe, for those heroes are all partly, or essentially, human. It shows us that we can be more than the sum of our parts, something that extends beyond logic or reasoning.

And I crushed that with my repetition, which is simply the application of logical, repeated processes to the realities of life. All things must end, for they cannot sustain themselves. However, logically, since anything will want to ensure its continued existence, it repeats behaviours that allow it to live. In that way are many things explained, such as eating, drinking, the repetitive habits of life, and so on. Because I want to stay alive, I shall repeat the things that allow me to stay alive. It's the reason people go to work, why they save money, why they cheat and steal to live. Such is life. I killed those Servants because they would kill me. They are a power that should not exist in this world. By nature, then, there was only one thing to do.

I raised my left hand towards Archer, who had allowed me to fall onto the street and was now looking around. His guard was down, and so I could read his mind like my own.

A hero; a person whose only true wish was to save everybody. Although thankful for the bounded field, he understood that the longer this War lasted, the more damage and the more people killed there would be. Hence his eagerness to attack, even without my command. Right now, being the last Servant left, he wished to track down and kill the remaining Masters and destroy the Grail. The most practical and logical course, save one.

"Archer, you will heed my three commands." I said. "One, you shall kill Kouhei Kaname." I pronounced, one o the seals on my left hand disappearing. "Second, you shall find and kill Yagi Kotohime." I pronounced once more, another of the spells bursting into light and energy. "And lastly, you will kill yourself, leaving no way for you to kill me afterwards."

Quick. Direct. To the point. I could almost feel his despair and his hatred as he said the words through gritted teeth, in order to avoid losing power.

"Yes, Master."

With those two words he set off into the night, while I prepared the ultimate gambit. Or, if you think about it, it was the most logical outcome.

All of the prerequisites already existed in the chronicles of Fuyuki. All I needed to do was to repeat it. However, to do so would probably require a lot more than the normal knowledge of the things to be repeated, and so I began to recall the story of the Fifth Fuyuki Grail War.

_It all began on a fateful night. Shirou Emiya witnessed the clash between the spearman and the red knight, and that changed his life forever…_

I let the events and recollections take over my mind as I stared blankly into the night, waiting to feel Archer's death.

My eyes received and registered the little light there was in the light. In fact, I was attempting to follow Archer's progress.

The only reason I say that I was staring blankly was because I was looking out there for a reason.

But as I stared into the night, I realized I was not seeing.


	15. Reprecussions

The red knight was in no way shocked at this turn of events, instead he was mostly regretting the way it had turned out, with him having to commit suicide afterwards. However, he was still intrigued by the results, something so completely counterintuitive that even he was surprised.

_Even though he knew exactly what a Servant could do, he still decided to take the risk and end it in one move. Since he had control over me, his actions were perfectly logical._

If you tame an enemy, use it to destroy the enemies you have not tamed before killing the one you have. It made perfect sense, really, and Archer could not fault him on his logic. Running into the night, searching for the priest who had escaped as soon as he saw the arrow fall, he mused again, letting the Command Spell take over his movement as he went back to musing.

_Looks like my part in this mess is over._ He thought, staring sadly up into the sky. _I've protected those near me, even indirectly._

He hadn't known his Master for a long time, in fact, they had known each other about the span of a night. In that time they had exchanged maybe a few sentences, and his Master had been able to reach into his memories while his guard was down. In those times, Archer had always been busy with other things, analyzing the situation, fighting, or observing.

However, now that his Master was lost in his own thoughts, Archer could see everything that his Master had seen. From laughing at his Master's pitiful attempt to speak Japanese, to seeing his Master's weapons preparation, learning a few more projections he would never need from looking at the disassembled guns, and hearing his Master's reactions to the times he had stolen glimpses of Archer's memories. He shrugged off the many different reactions his Master had, knowing that memories that people did not possess could change them for a second but rarely forever.

He paid careful attention, though, to the moments when his Master's guard was down, when he was thinking, or reminiscing on his own. Those were the things that would reveal the most about the person Archer had served. As he looked through the memories, he found a strange person beneath them.

Someone who accepted the suffering he was given with a nonchalant shrug and a rapid adaptation, easily sacrificing the things so many people held dear to try and atone for the mistake he made, the rash action that destroyed everything he once was. Someone who had easily thrown away his own humanity for his mission, definitively denying all that he used to be in favour of what he thought he had to. Giving his mind over to reason and logic, he did what he had to.

That was the kind of person who was easily misled, the kind of person to charge forward without a care in the world, using the most logical progression of thought and the course that made the most sense as he went forward. Archer grinned derisively, nodding as he began to understand this point more and more.

His Master was like an iron wall with wheels, charging forward steadily and unwaveringly towards an objective. Without fear or favour, he will do what is necessary to reach the end he had decided for himself. The mocking, derisive grin that Archer had on widened, as he realized exactly what his Master was.

_A person who prizes logic and sense above all things, easily being misled in different and nonsensical directions by his own logic. Simply because his logic is clear, and he has strived to keep it as free of emotion as possible._

Archer wondered, if logic required emotion to look logical, then would a decision made without emotion be logical? If emotions are an integral part of the decisions of a person, does that make his decision, the act of stabbing his steadfast knight and protector with a knife, something logical, or some sort of aberration? After all, there had been emotion on both sides, and at the time he had thought that doing either thing would save him.

Archer ran into the night, thinking these things as he hunted the final pair of Masters that opposed his Master. As he disappeared into the horizon, the question he had come up with began to burn in his chest, within the constructed heart, a doppelganger of a still-beating specimen from a hero's chest.

_We can say that up to a certain point logic makes us less emotional, less "human". But if we give ourselves over to complete logic, where even nonsensical outcomes are perfectly accepted, would that make us, in any way, less human? _

Archer passed from the main streets to the alley he had seen Kouhei duck into. His distinctive red coat and white hair were absorbed into the night, leaving nothing but a trace. Any spectator would have watched the tall warrior just disappear into the night, his gallant figure indistinguishable from the darkness around him.

Kagami Kouhei was running. He knew the odds were against him but at the very least he had to try. After all, he had not become an Executor of the Church through paperwork and calculation, no, he and all of the others were primarily men and women of action, and there had been many times when the odds were stacked against him and he came out on top.

He stopped, feeling his chest beginning to tighten with fatigue. He stopped and hid in the alley, sitting down between two dumpsters and leaning on the wall and looking down. In the darkness, it would be impossible to tell he was there, let alone a priest and not some homeless man staying in the street. Mere minutes before, everything had been going according to plan, with only one more obstacle before "Mission Complete".

Now, though, hiding in a dark alley and controlling his breath to make it softer and avoid detection, he began to wonder if he and Yagi could come out of this alive. When faced with a being on the level of a Servant with three Command Spells behind it, even Kouhei's battle-hardened confidence was shaken.

_This isn't going to be easy._ He thought to himself, hiding in the alley to collect himself, taking breaths as deep as the need for silence would allow. _A Servant on its own is bad enough, but with three Command Spells? I'm going to need backup._

He needed to find Yagi. He needed a place to hide from Archer. He knew that Yagi would not know about The Repeater's actions, and so he would have to meet her at the prearranged rendezvous point. That was about five train stations away, which was no problem. It would be getting there undetected that was the hard part.

Well, he could worry about that on the way there. Moving out of proximity to the area was first priority, as Archer would eventually find him if he stayed in the general area. He prepared himself to get up and move out of the alley.

And then he heard footsteps. Coming from the right, at the mouth of the alley from which he had entered, he heard the loud noise of human footfalls, amplified by the lack of sound at this time of night, even more so as it was the silence that came after the noise barrage that was a battle of Servants. Kouhei knew that the bounded field was still up, so the only people it could be were The Repeater or his Servant, Archer. Right now, he didn't want to fight either one, especially without an ally or a plan. Immediately his mind screamed at the rest of his body to move, to work the knees and joints and send him flying out the other end of the alley.

Without any sort of hesitation his body complied, muscle fibers in the legs and arms immediately contracting to push him forward. His arms met wall as he pushed himself up, his legs following suit by pushing off of the hard concrete. His entire body gyrating to his right, he charged down the alleyway, immediately clearing ten meters in a single rushing bound, the prelude to a run.

Total time taken to do all this was probably the blink of an eye, less than a second, to be sure.

But even that speed would not be enough to dodge a Servant. Without a noise the Archer effortlessly tossed his shortsword, the white one of the set called "Kanshou and Bakuya". Effortlessly sailing through the air, tumbling blade over hilt in its course, it flew towards its destined target at the end of the alley.

Kouhei Kagami knew that he had had a very small chance of escaping had Archer known he was there. However, instead of making his death certain by sitting there and waiting to be detected, he chose to rush out and take the chance, however small it might have been.

So even as he was stabbed in the back by the white blade, slicing through the reinforced, bulletproof habit of an Executor, he was perfectly glorious. Even as his blood, red yet invisible in the inky darkness of the night, decorated the alley with bloody gore, he continued to run, his muscles working to push him farther away from the direction of the blade, away from danger and into safety, into the continued future.

Were it not for the Command Spell, such a display of will to live would have moved Archer to relent, if not to call off the attack entirely. However, the will of the Command Spell was absolute, and any Servant, even one as powerful as the golden king, would loathe to resist it and lose their power.

The result was obvious, a game that ended as soon as it began. Even as the second blade, following in the shadow of the first, struck the escaping priest and stopped his escape in its tracks, he continued to try to move.

The quick lunge of the red knight in the darkness ended that quickly, with another pair of the white-and-black swords cutting through the Executor's reinforced robes.

"One down. One more to go." The red knight said grimly as he moved on. There was nothing left here.

Even the strongest ideal, without anyone to believe in it, would undoubtedly die. There was still one more place where Kagami Kouhei's ideal had been.

That loose end would have to be tied up. Archer was already moving, having a vague sense of which way he would have to go.

I could feel it. The echoes of emotion and a sense of the present from another point, so much less detailed than the distant memories of my Servant but that much more clear for it.

Kouhei Kagami is dead. I saw Archer throw his two shortswords at his back, and that was the end of that. I knew that Yagi Kotohime yet lived.

And I knew that Archer would undoubtedly find her.

Yagi Kotohime ran through the streets. The rendezvous was not going as planned, and she had a very, very bad idea why.

Then again, at their level of planned special operations, and with the fact that they fought better together than separately, it was suicide to go it alone, and an unthinkable thing to not make it to a rendezvous. There was only one possibility. Something had happened to her master.

And so she ran down the street, being careful to stick to the shadows. Taking the quickest route, she moved down the unlighted streets, melting into the inky black darkness of midnight.

She moved quickly and professionally, and she continued to run down the night streets. She knew that the logical decision was to call for backup, but she could at least find out what happened to her master first.

After all, if he was dead, she would want to be the one to bury him.

Archer stopped dead, no mean feat when you have been leaping from building to building while running on rooftops, searching for your quarry.

_If Yagi knows where Kouhei is, which she probably does, wouldn't it be better to kill her when she comes for his corpse?_

Without a second thought Archer reversed course, returning to the scene of the murder.

She saw it. With her memories from the repetition intact, it was the second time she had seen this, but it made it no less painful to see. In fact, it added on the fact that it had been The Repeater, someone whom she had believed to be a little nicer than the average, that had betrayed her master and left him like this.

The flashlight in her right hand threw a perfect beam of light over the corpse and the blood surrounding it, giving a perfect view of gruesome, gory art. With two gaping wounds in its back, the corpse of Kagami Kouhei continued to leak blood into the street, expanding the red puddle already there. She wrinkled her nose at the smell of blood, her master's, smelling just like any other blood she had drawn.

Although she had grief she had no time for that. Revenge would come first. She knew where the fight had taken place, after all, who could have missed the great ship in the sky and failed to mark its disappearance?

She removed her right hand from the blood, her pointer and middle finger being coated in the red lifeblood. Without hesitation she smeared it onto both of her cheeks.

"You will die." She declared as she rushed off into the night.

Archer arrived just as the girl left the alley. Before he realized it, though, she had already covered the distance. A shot in the dark, although tempting, would probably not hit her. Or so Archer thought to himself.

_Damn Command Spell, forcing me to make excuses._ He thought as he ran after the girl at his "fastest", leaving entire meters of ground behind him. _Now I have to make-believe._

She would reach him in time. Archer had no doubts about that.

Or rather that was what he forced himself to think.


	16. Into The Fight

It was a very lucky thing that the assassin slipped up a bit before she reached me. It gave me time to repeat the process of Archer calling his shortswords, whirl around, and see her in the darkness.

She had lines of blood running down her cheeks, probably smeared on by her fingers. Her entire body was moving into the strike, more than recovered from her previous fumble as she charged me with all she had. Surprised, I could barely move to counter, and instead pushed off to the side for dear life as she hurled six Black Keys at me with deadly precision.

It wasn't her attack itself that surprised me. Rather, it was the way she did it. Although her face mostly retained its normal, empty expression, except for the little tautness, it was when I saw her eyes and her threw where I really saw her fury.

She moved so fast she was ripping her Executor habit at the sleeves, and her eyes looked as malevolent as the golden king's piercing red irises, as he had looked at me previously in disgust for hiding from his wrath. A hurricane of death, it was only my instincts that saved me by throwing me to the side before being skewered by Black Keys. And again, the fact that I had not been pinned down by the shadow was proof of her anger, as normally she would have thrown Black Keys to pin me down as well, but she could not do that.

Rushing forward with only her fists, she could only think of hurting me. Without any sort of hesitation I dropped the shortswords, with which I had about zero practice anyway.

Instead I drew the Beretta M92F on my shoulder as well as the holdout knife I kept on my waist for occasions such as this. Repetitions of patterns flowed through my mind as I held these weapons, and as Yagi barrelled down on me I picked out one.

"Event Repetition: CQC!" I yelled, moving into the fight with my knife held in the reverse grip to point in the same direction as the barrel, right under the butt of the pistol's handle. I lunged forward, using the knife to stab out.

Yagi saw the trap immediately. By blocking the knife she would have to move one of her arms, which would cause her to leave herself exposed to bullets. Without any sort of hesitation she switched to a grapple, something that would allow her to remove the gun. Somehow, I had been hoping for that.

I let the grip on my gun slip as I cancelled the repetition before it could begin, instead replacing it with something far more sinister.

"Event Repetition: Subdue!"

_Understand the nature of the event._

I want to grapple and disable Yagi, at the very least. It's that simple. I will counter her grapple by tackling her to the ground.

_Replicate the necessary ingredients._

Just push. Push forward; kinetic energy and mass are all I really need to get this done.

_Bring forth the knowledge required for execution._

It's a tackle, what else do you need?

_Calculate the action and the reaction; make real the vision._

On the off chance she can counter this, well, I'm screwed.

Right before I scream the final line in my head, the line that would end it all, a few words popped, unbidden, into my head. Time slowed down, as if to give me time to finish my personal reflection.

_I suppose that what I am doing, killing another decent human being, is something I would hate myself dearly for._

_But my choice is made. I have already killed Kouhei, the one person who would understand and believe me, and help me live normally. There is no turning back._

"I can save not one unless I am willing to sacrifice others." I said, lunging into the attack. "Forgive me, Yagi, you've been great."

With that final, resigned line in my mind I shout the meaningless, soundless words, the words that herald my continuation of the pointless ritual of reality!

_Begin repetition._

It worked perfectly. Rushing into her arms, she did not expect me to take her down to the ground. Neither was she prepared for my reverse-grip knife moving up into the bottom of her jaw, stabbing with a serious but non-fatal wound.

_Crap._ I thought, as she kicked me off with her superior muscle power, sending me flying back a few meters. _I didn't check where I would stab._ I thought, slowly getting to my feet as she also raised herself up, bleeding from the mouth and Executor habit covered in blood. Although it was a wound far more serious than mine, she was well-trained, and already advancing on me.

I, on the other hand, was not used to taking blows. That one kick in the gut, especially from the muscled and toned leg of an Executor, was quite beyond anything I had actually been hit by before. Reeling from the pain, I brought myself to a position where I was barely even standing as she already staggered towards me, pained but clearly unfazed. She was closer now, about ten meters away.

_Ten meters. A distance insignificant for Servants, but one that can mean the difference between life and death for the likes of mortal men._ I thought, as I began to stagger slowly backwards. She was faster, though, and closing the distance.

Seven meters now. I remembered that I had the SABR, and as she staggered forward, probably out of Black Keys, I put my hand on the stock and wrenched it out of its seat on my shoulder.

Five meters now. She pulls out her Black Keys, and I know that it will soon be over.

For one of us.

And the moment that I decided my fate by repeating that Caladbolg, I decided that it would be me.

As she slowly raised her Black Keys to the throwing postion my rifle was already up. As her arms wound back I had only one response.

Braka-braka-braka-braka-braka-braka-braka. Ata-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. The deafening yet repeated roar of modern gunfire, the burst that emptied the 30-round clip in the space of a second or two. Without any sort of aiming, caution, or attempt to avoid collateral damage, I fired randomly into the night, probably causing my fair share of property damage.

Funny how I didn't care about causing property damage, even though it was actually the main reason I was in this situation. It had all been when I could no longer take Servants crushing the city and letting this senseless, ridiculous fight continue. And here I was, blasting randomly into the night without a care in the world, probably putting bullet holes in buildings without fear.

It was ridiculous. It was completely hypocritical, and went against everything I had done up to this point.

But it succeeded. One lucky shot had pierced Yagi through the forehead, putting a red hole in her head and sending her toppling backwards into the ground.

I didn't look at the carnage. I couldn't bring myself to, knowing that I had caused it. However, now I knew that I could finally finish my plan.

_Luck is a cruel and fickle bitch._ Archer thought as he watched, seeing Yagi's head clearly hit by a bullet, the gray matter and bone fragments flying out the back end as he watched. _It's all up to the Master now._

He summoned a pair of swords, the very same black-and-white pair that he had always used, and held him in his hands. Although he himself was not powering the projection, the Command Spell made sure he had no choice in the matter. As much as he resisted, he could not stop the blades, already moving towards his own neck.

And even with all his motor neurons firing, telling him not to do it, his arm sliced his neck open, letting the tan-skinned and white-haired former head of the copy of a hero fall to the ground, the red blood of "life" following it.

Archer knew that within ten minutes all would disappear as the magical energy was assimilated once more into the earth, and there would be no trace of him left. With that in mind, his decapitated head tossed off its last words, irrespective of the actual functioning of the human body.

"What a worthless way to die."

And with that, Archer too was gone.

I knew where it was. The remnants of the Command Spell on my left hand told me exactly where to go. As I descended the stairs to the basement of the city hall, staring quietly at the steps hidden in the darkness under my feet, I gave myself over to thought.

_After all this, I guess this job ended up a lot different than how I thought it would._ I thought to myself as I felt my descent. Slowly, I could begin to feel myself moving closer to the offensive, dark, ominous power that was the Holy Grail. I bit my lip, moving closer to the curses that I could practically feel eating away at my existence.

_Die. Die. Die. Stop existing. Become discreated. Achieve death, return to nothingness. All things end, and now is your time. Die. Die. Die. There are only two things certain in life, death and taxes. Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Die. Die. Die._

Even the most annoying and overused advertisement spiel would be music to my ears after this, I thought as I walked down the stairs, every step adding a small, distant-sounding clang to the chorus of curses coming from the Grail, a malevolent presence that could not be forgotten or ignored. Especially when it creates sludge-like monsters of pure darkness, like a slurry containing death threats and curses, and has them attack you, the red lines on them the only indication that they existed in the total black of the basement.

I had not come unprepared to fight in the darkness. Without hesitation I spoke the incantation I had had ready on my lips since I had entered.

"Event repetition: Eyes of the Night Bird!"

Another one of my family's old and quirky magecrafts, a strange and quaint variation of the norm of what magecraft was. It immediately changed my eyes, giving me the magical equivalent of nightvision goggles.' Already seeing the black sludge advancing on me from the front, I threw myself over the stairs to the floor that was not very far away.

It had been nothing more than a test. Now that I could see, I noticed everything.

Nothing was as it should be. The whole world felt off, completely twisted by the dark force that seemed to return everything to its primordial black goop. The smell in the basement was indescribable, worse than the smell of workshops in which magi had made things I used to think were unacceptable abominations.

Now that I saw this, though, those laboratories looked like children's programming. In the very middle of the basement was a tower, and at its peak, glowing like a black sun, was the centrepiece of the basement. Without the support of the Einzberns, the Holy Church had had to create a proper vessel for the Grail, and so they had borrowed this basement, all of it being converted to the dark energies of the curse of all the worlds.

I puked. I'm not ashamed to admit it. Without even consciously thinking about it, my first action after just glancing at the whole set-up was to bend forward and unload the contents of my stomach onto the floor, adding to the smell of death and decay. The acid burned my mouth and throat on the way out, the feel of chunks of my last meal coming out my mouth disgusting me thoroughly. It spattered all over the floor, dirtying my shoes and denim pants.

The worst part was the voice in my ear saying: _Yes. Wouldn't you want to spit out the rest of yourself just like that, to give up, to have all your problems end? End it. Discreate yourself._

_No way in hell. Although this might be close._ I thought, lifting my heavy head and wiping off my chin, looking at the monstrous tower before me. "I have already decided."

_Oh? Follow through on it, then._

Suddenly this stopped being a game. As if the black sludge that contained all of the curses of the world could move like slime, it began to form into large clumps that resembled gigantic versions of the monsters I had encountered so far, little mountains of black sludge that ran as they stood erect. The only difference was that these ones were several meters tall, almost reaching the ceiling of the basement. Composing myself, I saw two of them rear their heads on either side of me, ready to strike at the aberration in their land of darkness.

No hesitation. I ran, charging through the space between them before they could strike me. Anticipating this, they slammed down their great arms in front of me. Their huge arms almost cut off my vision of the fifty-meter distance between myself and the throne of the Holy Grail, the solid darkness blocking off my ground path.

So I took to the air. Although I had had this already planned, it was in no way easy, as the curses in my head only seemed to increase in volume, screaming at me to die so loud and in so many ways that I could barely hear myself think. In fact, I began to feel the curse as a physical pressure, like having a weight on my chest that became progressively heavier and heavier, threatening to drown me. Finally I found the spell I wanted, and forcing my breath through my throat, I said the words, throat already constricting slightly as a sign of what was to come.

"Event Repetition: Wings of the Pegasus, fly!"

Pulling out the techniques I thought I had long forgotten, the invisible wings gave me a boost, just barely high enough to fly over the easily five-meter tall solid darkness created by the "arms". Although I had been feeling the pressure of death from all over the basement since I had entered, my feet, passing barely a centimetre over the darkness, the pressure intensified immensely around it. I could feel the pressure practically crushing bone, stopping blood, and triggering nerves left and right.

Thankfully, it lasted but a moment as my feet hit the ground and remembered the mission, using my force of mind to blast forward into a sprint. The Grail was not unprepared for this either, but its preparation came in a form I did not expect.

It stopped attacking. Completely. Instead, the raging storm stopped, and as I reached the base of the tower that the Holy Grail was on I saw why.

The body of an old friend was strung up there, streaked with darkness all over, which I could only see as his muscles were topless and plain to see. Despite his normally deceptive clothing, he was actually extremely athletic. He stood there, as I knew him once, only strengthened by the eerie blackness that tied itself around him like a strange cross between ribbons and veins, branching off and integrating into the body yet clearly remaining on the surface.

He was unarmed, but even in that condition he was an opponent far beyond the average man.

His name was Kouhei Kaname, and like an apparition returning from the dead to finish me off, he stood there. The whispering stopped, as if it was going to only distract me. Indeed, it would, and I subconsciously stopped running, naturally not wanting to break the moment.

He took a step forward, his eyes still nailed to the floor. The sound of his one step reverberated throughout the room. I knew that the noise was just being amplified, his every movement accentuated.

I felt the load on my chest start pushing inwards. It only got worse when he looked up at me, and his eyes moved to recognize me. They were completely steady and looked at me without regret, remorse, or hesitation, something that I myself could not replicate by looking at him myself.

He regarded me for a second, standing in a small patch of warehouse floor in a circle created by the black sludge of living curses around me. And then he said five words. A simple, short sentence that convinced me to discreate myself more than every other curse thrown at me today.

"I tried to save you."

He said them in his normal, relaxed voice, still nice, still friendly, still forgiving. All that made it just that much worse. All the sins that I had done, all the things I had tried not to think about, they all came rushing back.

That I had killed, dishonourably and deceivingly, two people who merely wanted the best for me, merely in order to fulfil my personal desire to end this war. That I was tainted, that I could never be trusted.

That no matter how I tried, I could never be saved. Whether it was the world or me, I could never be saved.

So when the dark chorus of curses started again, I did the only thing I knew how to do. I did the only thing I could to escape, even for a moment, from the thought processes and the guilt that I knew would crush me. One simple action liberated my heart, stopped me from thinking, and absorbed me completely into the moment, insulating me from the pain that I knew I fully deserved.

Fists raised, charging recklessly into the fray, headed straight for the wall of muscle that was my now-corrupted friend, I began the fight.


	17. Go Gently Into That Good Night

Fists raised, charging recklessly into the fray, headed straight for the wall of muscle that was my now-corrupted friend, I began the fight.

I suppose this is the reason that being a magus-for-hire was my first choice for a profession when I killed off my family. The act of killing them itself, the act of fighting them as they tried to resist my attacks, discovering ways and means in which to defeat them, and losing myself in the challenge. The simple decision, the one challenge with the most dangerous and intricate steps but the most obvious answer.

_Do you want to live? Yes or no. Clearly the answer is yes. _

_To live you must kill this opponent, or at least defeat him. Are you willing to stake your life on this? Yes or no. Clearly, again, the answer is yes._

_But then comes the ultimate challenge of combat, the most intricate and thought-requiring part of the whole thing, and what makes it truly interesting._

_How, exactly, will you defeat your enemy? You, who has very little experience in hand to hand combat, are taking on an extremely muscular, agile, and highly-trained Executor who, on top of that, has been put on odo steroids by the dark powers you are trying to kill. In addition, you not only feel like crap but also are both physically and mentally exhausted. Add in that no repetitions come to mind right now, and the odds are basically telling you that you lose._

_Again, I will ask the question. How do you defeat your enemy?_

And this is my answer. First, that the enemy is not the opponent in front of me. The priest was innocent, and in no way will I hurt him, even after death. The charging into battle, the denial, all of it cleared my head to think only of victory. As I rushed towards him, my mind began to work again, immediately presenting me with the following.

My research into the Fuyuki Grail War had given me three last vital pieces of information.

One, that it had not been the doing of the orange-haired one currently sharing in the Fuyuki guardianship that had ended the last War. It had been the sacrifice of the vessel, the performing of the Third Sorcery.

Two, That Lord El-Melloi II, after the conclusion of the last War, had come back to completely disable the magic circle and stop the cycle of Holy Grail Wars. Both of them held the keys to restoring the reality we thought was.

Three, that there had been one of the participants who had contracted with the darkness within the Grail itself, using its power for her own ends.

The plan was as simple as it was stupid. The plan was, simply, to repeat it all.

It was stupid because it was known that sorceries are difficult to create, and repeating them would be even more difficult, much more so because I know nothing of the magecraft involved, for both facts. It would take up an immense amount of prana, more than I could ever imagine, more than anything ever done today.

It would be simple because my repetition is a concept. Simply put, the world cannot refuse me. However, this also means that it will happen, whatever the cost. To actually perform the thing right now would mean that I would probably have to suck the prana out from the whole city, inhabitants, wildlife, ground and all. That was exactly what I wanted to avoid.

There was only one thing to do. Changing course, I snapped off of my charging direction and directly into the black mud. It loomed large in front of me as I fell towards it, attempting to brace myself for the torture I knew would come.

"Attempting" was an understatement. Whatever mental processes I had, save one, were immediately hijacked by the curse of such utter horror that I felt everything erode. It was as if I was being torn apart by metal grinders, mind, body, and soul alike.

My body no longer exists. My brain no longer exists. It is only the one, single-minded determined thought and my jaded nature that keeps me alive. It is only the unswerving determination that has allowed me to use repetition and impose my will upon the world that allows me to pull off this one last attack.

"Contract with me, spirit of the Grail!" I yelled, and so it did. "I possess your wish, and it is I who shall bring you forth!"

Without hesitation it flooded me, somewhat easing the burden upon myself, after it was forced to accept the terms of the Master-Servant contract. I knew that as soon as the contract was final and the Command Spells appeared on what was left of my left hand, if anything, it would use our symbiotic link to bypass any and all thoughts I had and impose its will.

It was shoddy. It was haphazard. But it was also the most important repetition of my whole life.

_Is failure an option? Yes or no._

_Of course not._

"Event Repetition: Destruction of the Grail!"

_I regret killing you, Kouhei. It was a dumb and rash decision, and I suppose this wouldn't be quite so bad if I didn't do so. It's too late now, though._

_So I hope you don't mind if I make the best of this bad situation._

Right after I let loose those words, the darkness consumed my thoughts. The Repeater no longer existed.

At least, in that world, which continued to exist long after he was gone.

_Record of the Eternal Warrior._

_#1: The Repeater._

The tale of my first and most loyal warrior shall ever be one of my favourite reads. He stands with me now, first of what is to be an eternal army, a set of "firemen" if you will, to deal with the pressing crises that threaten the universe. We're not talking about "world-breakers" or "star-shatterers" or even "intergalactic extinction", no, none of that. We go against that which could end the universe itself.

We are of a new breed, unlike those who keep the Death Record, yet we are from them.

Instead of merely listening to the stories and allowing the local inhabitants of the world to deal with their own problems, we strike.

From the shadows we save, from the aether we come and it is to there we return. Soldiers of existence, we travel unknown and unknowable, ending all that would end the existence.

This is the Record of the Eternal Warrior. I am the first, and he who archives their stories and leads them into battle, whenever the opportunity arises.

My name is Xylouris Trigger. Although I will never be recognized, I will sear the memory of my deeds into the world itself.

We are many times over saviours, but never heroes.

I closed the book and put it on the shelf next to me. Inside my mansion-headquarters, which I had decided to call Villa ex Machina, after an old expression involving saving someone through unexpected means, there were hundreds of rooms, ready to house warriors who would save the world.

None of us, not even I, knew how we got here or why. But we all had something we wanted to do and something we have to make up for, and that will propels us even in death.

We are aberrations who should not exist. Created by the will of the once-living, we return to fight and save. Such is our truth.

I walked out to meet The Repeater. There is a lot more to knowing a person than knowing their backstory.


End file.
